Page:Hope--Sophy of Kravonia.djvu/117

AT THE GOLDEN LION like just one minute to think about that meeting, Captain Hercules!"

Markart had shrunk back, but Mistitch hurled a taunt at him and at all the throng.

"You're curs, one and all! But I'll put a heart in you yet! And now"—he burst into a new guffaw—"my young friends and I are going for a walk. What, aren't the streets of Slavna free to gentlemen? My friends and I are going for a walk. If we meet anybody on the pavement—well, he must take to the road. We're going for a walk."

Amid a dead silence he went out, his two henchmen after him. He and Sterkoff walked firm and true—Rastatz lurched in his gait. A thousand eyes followed their exit, and from five hundred throats went up a long sigh of relief that they were gone. But what had they gone to do? The company decided that it was just as well for them, whether collectively or as individuals, not to know too much about that. Let it be hoped that the cool air outside would have a sobering effect and send them home to bed! Yet from behind the glass screen there soon arose again a busy murmur of voices, like the hum of a beehive threatened with danger.

"A diplomatic career is really full of interest, ma chére," observed Baron von Hollbrandt to his fair companion. "It would be difficult to see anything so dramatic in Berlin!"

His friend's pretty blue eyes lit up with an eager intensity as she took the cigarette from between her lips. Her voice was full of joyful excitement:

"Yes, it's to death between that big Mistitch and the Prince—the blood of one or both of them, you'll see!"

"You are too deliciously Kravonian," said Hollbrandt, with a laugh. 99