Page:Gibbs--The yellow dove.djvu/236

 “Well? And what have you to say?”

“It is a lie!” she managed to stammer. “He lies—lies, I tell you!”

“Ach! If I could believe you! Why should he lie? Unlike the case of Rizzio, Herr Hammersley has not robbed Herr Maxwell of a bride.”

“There is a mistake”

“I fear not.”

“But why should Mr. Hammersley have come? He would have been safe in England”

“He himself says to the contrary”

She was breaking fast and he sought further to involve her.

“He did not have to come. Why should he have come?” she asked wildly, rising to her feet and laying her hands upon his arm. “Answer me that, Excellenz.”

For reply he turned away from her abruptly and walked the length of the room to an end window, where he stood for a moment looking out.

“Come, Fräulein, and I will show you something.”

She approached him blindly and followed his gaze around the corner of the building. Upon a tree stump in the kitchen garden, looking out across the fields toward the wooded hills sat Hammersley, calmly smoking.

“Half of his blood is English, half Prussian, Fräulein, but it is the English in him that dominates. Is there anything that is Prussian about him? Tell me. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot—his pipe, his bent shoulders, his careless air—he is English, all English. He knows that at this moment I am weighing his fate in the balance and yet he smokes his short wooden pipe. If he has Prussian blood it is a pity, for Germany needs all the Prussian