Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/370

 her to need no answer. What, would she go back to Bartenstein—to insignificance, to dulness, and to tutelage? Surely not!

"But I'm not very like the grenadier," I said.

She understood me and flushed, relapsing into uneasiness. I saw that I had touched some chord in her, and I would willingly have had my words unsaid. Presently she turned to me, and forgetting the gazers round held out her hands to mine. Her eyes seemed dim.

"I'll try—I'll try to make you happy," she said.

And she said well. Letting all think what they would, I rose to my feet and bowed low over the hand that I kissed. Then I gave her my arm, and walked with her through the lane that they made for us. Surely we pretended well, for somehow, from somewhere, a cheer arose, and they cheered us as we walked through. Elsa's face was in an instant bright again. She pressed my arm in a spasm of pleasure. We proceeded in triumph to where Princess Heinrich sat; away behind her in the foremost row of a group of men stood Wetter—Wetter leading the cheers, waving his handkerchief, grinning in charmingly diabolical fashion. The suitability of Princess Heinrich's reception of us I must leave to be imagined; it was among her triumphs.

I fell at once into the clutches of Cousin Elizabeth, my regard for whom was tempered by a preference for more restraint in the display of emotion.

"My dearest boy," she said, pulling me into a seat by her, "I saw you. It makes me so happy."

A thing, without being exactly good in itself, may of course have incidental advantages.

"It was sure to happen. You were made for one another. Dear Elsa is young and shy, and—and she