Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/252

 to prevent her from saying a few words to me after the meal. I assured her that Elsa should receive from me the most delicate respect.

"I'm not afraid of your being too precipitate," she said. "It's not that."

"No, I shall not be too precipitate," I agreed.

"But remember that—that she's quite a girl, and"—my mother broke off, looked at me for a moment, and then looked away—"she'll like you if you make her think you like her," she went on in a moment.

I seemed suddenly to see the true woman and to hear the true opinion. The crisis then was great; my mother had dropped the veil and thrown aside her finished art.

"I hope to like her very much," said I.

Princess Heinrich was a resolute woman; the path on which she set her foot she trod to the end.

"I know what you've persuaded yourself you feel about it," she said bluntly and rather scornfully. "Well, don't let her see that."

"She would refuse me?"

"No. She'd marry you and hate you for it. Above all, don't laugh at her."

I sat silently looking at Princess Heinrich.

"You're so strange," she said. "I don't know what's made you so. Have you no feelings?"

"Do you think that?" I asked, smiling.

"Yes, I do," she answered defiantly. "You were the same even as a boy. It was no use appealing to your affections."

I had outgrown my taste for wrangles. But I certainly did not recollect that either Krak or my mother had been in the habit of appealing to my affections; Krak's appeals, at least, had been