which for very shame she had hitherto veiled from all other eyes. She
kept nothing back; she dwelt upon her unhappiness with her boorish
husband, told him of slights and indignities innumerable, whose pain she
had hitherto so bravely dissembled, confessed, even, that he had beaten
her upon occasion.

Koenigsmark went red and white by turns, with the violent surge of his
emotions, and the deep sapphire eyes blazed with wrath when she came at
last to the culminating horror of blows endured.

"It is enough, madame," he cried. "I swear to you, as Heaven hears me,
that he shall be punished."

"Punished?" she echoed, checking in her stride, and looked at him with
a smile of sad incredulity. "It is not his punishment I seek, my friend,
but my own salvation."

"The one can be accomplished with the other," he answered hotly, and
struck the cut-steel hilt of his sword. "You shall be rid of this lout
as soon as ever I can come to him. I go after him to Berlin to-night."

The colour all faded from her cheeks, her sensitive lips fell apart, as
she looked at him aghast.

"Why, what would you do? What do you mean?" she asked him.

"I will send him the length of my sword, and so make a widow of you,
madame."

She shook her head. "Princes do not fight," she said, on a note of
contempt.

"I shall so shame him that he will have no alternative--unless, indeed,
he is shameless. I will choose my occasion shrewdly, put an affront
on him one evening in his cups, when drink shall have made him valiant
enough to commit himself to a meeting. If even that will not answer, and
he still shields himself behind his rank--why, there are other ways to
serve him." He was thinking, perhaps, of Mr. Thynne.

The heat of so much reckless, romantic fury on her behalf warmed the
poor lady, who had so long been chilled for want of sympathy, and
starved of love. Impulsively she caught his hand in hers.

"My friend, my friend!" she cried, on a note that quivered and broke.
"You are mad--wonderfully beautifully mad, but mad. What would become of
you if you did this?"

He swept the consideration aside by a contemptuous, almost angry
gesture. "Does that matter? I am concerned with what is to become of
you. I was born for your service, my princess, and the service being
rendered..." He shrugged and smiled, threw out his hands and let them
fall again to his sides in an eloquent gesture. He was the complete
courtier, the knight-errant, the romantic preux