e was frankly gracious and friendly; but, it was evident,
she sought no sympathy and wanted no confidants.

All these details came to me in the reports of the Secret Police. I
saw her very frequently on the street; passing her both on the sidewalk
and on horseback. And if she were pining for the newly wedded husband,
who had forsaken and denied her, she most assuredly did not show it.
Nor did her impudence diminish. Whenever she saw me she tried to catch
my eye. Several times it happened she was watching me when I first
observed her; then, like a flash, she would bow and smile with the air
of the most intimate camaraderie.

Of course, I pointedly ignored her, but it had no effect; for the next
time her greeting was only the more effusively intimate. Naturally,
the people stared. I felt sure they winked at one another knowingly,
when my back was turned. The whole situation was intensely irritating
and growing more so every day; and my patience, never long at best,
must have been a trifle uncertain for those around me.

I think I am not an unjust man, by nature; but some provocations would
make even the best tempers quick and squally. And, then, what is the
good of being an Archduke, if one may not flare out occasionally!

I was a bit lonely, too. The King was in the North and the Princess
was with him--and so, for a time, was Lotzen, I happened to know;
though I understood he had, now, left them and was returning to
Dornlitz. I wished him a long journey and a slow one.

His suave courtesy was becoming unbearable; and my sorest trial was to
receive it calmly and to meet it in kind. Truly, if he had found a
brilliant leading woman in Madeline Spencer, he had an equally
brilliant leading man in himself.

I was no possible match for him; and I could feel the sneer behind his
smile. I wanted to give him a good body beating--and I was sure he
knew it, and that it only amused him. I could, now, quite understand
the rage which makes a man walk up to another and smash him in the face
without a word of preliminary. I would have given five years of life
to do that to Lotzen.

And, instead, I had to smile--and smile--and smile. Bah! it makes me
shiver.

He must have fancied I wished him a long absence, for he returned with
astonishing promptness. I saw him the next afternoon in the Officers'
Club--and our greeting was almost effusive. In fact, if anything were
required to prove how intensely we despised eac