Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/80

 "You must not go, sire. It would be known, and they would say" Baptiste's shrug was eloquent.

"Do they always talk about everything one does?"

"Certainly, sire, it is your privilege," smiled my servant. "But I think he might come to you. That could be managed; not in the Schloss, but in the wood, quite privately. I can contrive it."

Baptiste did contrive it, and Baron Fritz came. I was now just too old to scorn love, just too young to sympathize fully with it. There is that age in a boy's life, but since he holds his tongue about it, it is apt to escape notice, and people jest on the sudden change in his attitude toward women. Nothing in nature is sudden; no more, then, is this transition. I looked curiously at Fritz; he was timid with me. I perceived that he was not an ordinary young nobleman, devoted only to sport and wine; he had something of Owen's romance, but in him it was self-centred, not open wide to embrace the universe of things beautiful and ugly. He thanked me for receiving him in a rather elaborate and artificial fashion. I wondered at once that he had caught Victoria's fancy; her temperament seemed too robust for him. He began to speak of her in some very poetical phrases; he quoted a line of poetry about Diana and Endymion. I had been made to turn it into Latin verses, and its sentiment fell cold on my soul. He spoke of his passion with desperation, and I thought with pride. He said that, happen what might, his whole life was the Princess's; but he did not mention Victoria's name, he said "her" with an air of mystery, as though spies lurked in the woods. There was nobody save Baptiste, standing sentry to guard this secret meeting. I gave the