ps. They met at the
re-entrant angle, where a thin stream sprayed across a boulder and was
scattered in rain among the brush; and the Baronet saluted the Prince
with much punctilio. To the Countess, on the other hand, he bowed with a
kind of sneering wonder.

"Is it possible, madam, that you have not heard the news?" he asked.

"What news?" she cried.

"News of the first order," returned Sir John: "a revolution in the
state, a Republic declared, the palace burned to the ground, the
Princess in flight, Gondremark wounded----"

"Heinrich wounded?" she screamed.

"Wounded and suffering acutely," said Sir John. "His groans----"

There fell from the lady's lips an oath so potent that, in smoother
hours, it would have made her hearers jump. She ran to her horse,
scrambled to the saddle, and, yet half-seated, dashed down the road at
full gallop. The groom, after a pause of wonder, followed her. The rush
of her impetuous passage almost scared the carriage-horses over the
verge of the steep hill; and still she clattered further and the crags
echoed to her flight, and still the groom flogged vainly in pursuit of
her. At the fourth corner, a woman trailing slowly up leaped back with a
cry and escaped death by a hand's-breadth. But the Countess wasted
neither glance nor thought upon the incident. Out and in, about the
bluffs of the mountain wall, she fled, loose-reined, and still the groom
toiled in her pursuit.

"A most impulsive lady!" said Sir John. "Who would have thought she
cared for him?" And before the words were uttered, he was struggling in
the Prince's grasp.

"My wife! the Princess? What of her?"

"She is down the road," he gasped. "I left her twenty minutes back."

And next moment the choked author stood alone, and the Prince on foot
was racing down the hill behind the Countess.

CHAPTER IV

BABES IN THE WOOD

While the feet of the Prince continued to run swiftly, his heart, which
had at first by far outstripped his running, soon began to linger and
hang back. Not that he ceased to pity the misfortune or to yearn for the
sight of Seraphina; but the memory of her obdurate coldness awoke within
him, and woke in turn his own habitual diffidence of self. Had Sir John
been given time to tell him all, had he even known that she was speeding
to the Felsenburg, he would have gone to her with ardour. As it was, he
began to see himself once more intruding, profiting, perhaps, by her
misfortune, and now t