von Lyndal carried out his instructions
concerning Miss Mowbray. He saw each partner presented to her for a
dance the Emperor might not claim; and to save his life, or a national
crisis, he could not have forced the same expression in speaking with
her Royal Highness from Russia, as that which spontaneously brightened
his face when at last he approached Virginia.

"Who is that girl?" asked Count von Breitstein, in his usual abrupt
manner, as the arm of Leopold girdled the slim waist of the Princess,
and the eyes of Leopold drank light from another pair of eyes lifted
to his in laughter.

It was to Baroness von Lyndal that the old Chancellor put his
question, and she fluttered a tiny, diamond-spangled fan of lace to
hide lips that would smile, as she answered, "What, Chancellor, are
you jesting, or don't you really know who that girl is?"

Count von Breitstein turned eyes cold and gray as glass away from the
two figures moving rhythmically with the music, to the face of the
once celebrated beauty. Long ago he had admired Baroness von Lyndal as
passionately as it was in him to admire any woman; but that day was so
far distant as to be remembered with scorn, and now, such power as she
had over him was merely to excite a feeling of irritation.

"I seldom trouble myself to jest," he answered.

"Ah, one knows that truly great men are born without a sense of humor;
those who have it are never as successful in life as those without,"
smiled the Baroness, who was by birth a Hungarian, and loved laughter
better than anything else, except compliments upon her vanishing
beauty. "How stupid of me to have tried your patience. 'That girl,' as
you so uncompromisingly call her, has two claims to attention at
court. She is the English Miss Helen Mowbray whose mother has come to
Kronburg armed with sheaves of introductions to us all. She is also
the young woman of whom the papers are full to-day, for it is she who
saved the Emperor's life."

"Indeed," said the Chancellor, a gray gleam in his eye as he watched
the white figure floating on the tide of music, in the arms of
Leopold. "Indeed."

"I thought you would have known, for you know most things before other
people hear of them," went on the Baroness. "Lady Mowbray and her
daughter are stopping at the Hohenlangenwald Hotel. That's the mother
sitting on the left of Princess Neufried,--the pretty, Dresden china
person. But the girl is a great beauty."

"It's generous of you to s