Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/82

. "Sometimes I think that I can not endure to live."

"Baptiste told me that they watched you when you walked by the river."

He turned to me with a very interested expression of face.

"Do they really?" he asked.

"So Baptiste said."

"I promised her that, whatever happened, I would do nothing rash," said he. "What would her feelings be?"

"We should all be very much distressed," said I, in my best court manner.

"Ah, the world, the world!" sighed Baron Fritz. Then with an air of great courage he went on. "Yet, how am I so different from her?"

"I think you are very much alike," said I.

"But she is—a Princess!"

I felt that he was laying a sort of responsibility on me. I could not help Victoria being a Princess. He laughed bitterly; I seemed to be put on my defence.

"I think it just as absurd as you do," I hastened to say.

"Absurd!" he echoed. "I didn't say that I thought it absurd. Would not your Majesty rather say tragic? There must be kings, princes, princesses—our hearts pay the price."

I was growing rather weary of this Baron, and wondering more and more what Victoria had discovered in him. But my lack of knowledge led me into an error ; I attributed what wearied me in no degree to the Baron himself, but altogether to his condition. "This, then, is what it is to be in love," I was saying to myself; I summoned up the relics