n a serious youth, handsomer, a
blond in a country of few blond men. His joyous smile had not taken on
the mocking twist it acquired later. His blue eyes were gay and joyous.

When she had bowed and would have kissed his hand, it had been Karl who
kissed hers, and straightened to smile down at her.

"This is a very happy day, Countess," he had said.

Then the old aunt had hustled forward, and the peasants had bowed
nervously, and bustle and noise had filled the old place.

For four days the royal hunters had stayed. On the third day Karl had
pleaded fatigue, and they had walked through the pine woods. On that
very devil's bridge he had kissed her. They had had serious talks, too.
Karl was ambitious, even then. The two countries were at peace, but for
how long? Contrary to opinion, he said, it was not rulers who led their
people into war. It was the people who forced those wars. He spoke of
long antagonisms, old jealousies, trade relations.

She had listened, flattered, had been an intelligent audience. Even now,
she felt that it was her intelligence as much as her beauty that had
ensnared Karl. For ensnared he had been. She had dreamed wild dreams
that night after he kissed her, dreams of being his wife. She was not
too young to know passion in a man's eyes, and Karl's had burned with
it.

Then, the next day, while the hunters were away, her aunt had come to
her, ugly, dowdy, and alarmed. "Little fool!" she had said. "They play,
these princes. But they are evil with women, and dangerous. I have seen
your eyes on him, sick with love. And Karl will amuse himself--it is the
blood--and go away, laughing."

She had been working with the satin dress, trying to make it lovely
for him. Over it her eyes had met her aunt's, small and twitching with
anxiety. "But suppose he cares for me?" she had asked. "Sometimes I
think--Why should you say he is evil?"

"Bah!"

She had grown angry then and, flinging the dress on the floor, had risen
haughtily. "I think he will marry me," she had announced, to be met with
blank surprise, followed by cackling old laughter.

Karl had gone away, kissing her passionately, before he left her, in the
dark hall. And many things had followed. A cousin, married into Karnia
became lady-in-waiting to the old Queen. Olga Loschek had visited her.
No accident all this, but a carefully thought-out plan of Karl's. She
had met Karl again. She was no longer the ill-dressed, awkward girl of
the mountain