, as this man for a peasant, so thought
the Princess.

CHAPTER IV

THE EAGLE'S EYRIE

So she had gone on her knees to him after all--or almost! She was glad
her mother did not know. And she hoped that he did not feel the
pulsing of the blood in her fingers, as he took her hand and lifted
her to her feet. There was shame in this tempest that swept through
her veins, because he did not share it; for to her, though this
meeting was an epoch, to him it was no more than a trivial incident.
She would have keyed his emotions to hers, if she could, but since she
had had years of preparation, he a single moment, perhaps she might
have been consoled for the disparity, could she have read his eyes.
They said, if she had known: "Is the sky raining goddesses to-day?"

Now, what were to be her first words to him? Dimly she felt, that if
she were to profit by this wonderful chance to know the man and not
the Emperor--this chance which might be lost in a few moments, unless
her wit befriended her--those words should be beyond the common. She
should be able to marshal her sentences, as a general marshals his
battalions, with a plan of campaign for each.

A spirit monitor--a match-making monitor--whispered these wise advices
in her ear; yet she was powerless to profit by them. Like a
school-girl about to be examined for a scholarship, knowing that all
the future might depend upon an hour of the present, the dire need to
be resourceful, to be brilliant, left her dumb.

How many times had she not thought of her first conversation with
Leopold of Rhaetia, planning the first words, the first looks, which
must make him know that she was different from any other girl he had
ever met! Yet here she stood, speechless, epigrams turning tail and
racing away from her like a troop of playful colts refusing to be
caught.

And so it was the Emperor who spoke before Virginia's _savoir faire_
came back.

"I hope you're not hurt?" asked the chamois hunter, in the _patois_
dear to the heart of Rhaetian mountain folk.

She had been glad before, now she was thankful that she had spent many
weeks and months in loving study of the tongue which was Leopold's. It
was not the _metier_ of a chamois hunter to speak English, though the
Emperor was said to know the language well, and she rejoiced in her
ability to answer the chamois hunter as he would be answered, keeping
up the play.

"I am hurt only in the pride that comes before a fall," she