ly going to be able to ruin
the plans of the noblest woman on earth.

Thus thought Fritzing, mopping his forehead. Annalise had rushed away
to her attic after flinging her defiance at him, her spirit ready to
dare anything but her body too small, she felt, to risk staying within
reach of a man who looked more like somebody who meant to shake her
than any one she had ever seen. Fritzing mopped his forehead, and
mopped and mopped again. He stood where she had left him, his eyes
fixed on the ground, his distress so extreme that he was quite near
crying. What was he to do? What was he to say to his Princess? How was
he to stop the girl's going back to Kunitz? How was he to stop her
going even so far as young Morrison? That she should tell young
Morrison who Priscilla was would indeed be a terrible thing. It would
end their being able to live in Symford. It would end their being able
to live in England. The Grand Duke would be after them, and there
would have to be another flight to another country, another start
there, another search for a home, another set of explanations,
pretences, fears, lies,--things of which he was so weary. But there
was something else, something worse than any of these things, that
made Fritzing mop his forehead with so extreme a desperation: Annalise
had demanded the money due to her, and Fritzing had no money.

I am afraid Fritzing was never meant for a conspirator. Nature never
meant him to be a plotter, an arranger of unpleasant surprises for
parents. She never meant him to run away. She meant him, probably,
to spend his days communing with the past in a lofty room with
distempered walls and busts round them. That he should be forced to
act, to decide, to be artful, to wrangle with maids, to make ends
meet, to squeeze his long frame and explosive disposition into a
Creeper Cottage where only an ill-fitting door separated him from the
noise and fumes of the kitchen, was surely a cruel trick of Fate, and
not less cruel because he had brought it on himself. That he should
have thought he could run away as well as any man is merely a proof of
his singleness of soul. A man who does that successfully is always,
among a great many other things, a man who takes plenty of money with
him and knows exactly where to put his hand on more when it is wanted.
Fritzing had thought it better to get away quickly with little money
than to wait and get away with more. He had seized all he could of his
own that was