Page:T.M. Royal Highness.djvu/237

Rh an expression of contempt on her face. Then her slightly distended grey eyes shifted, while she smiled the mysterious smile which Klaus Heinrich already knew and which had something seductive about it.

He felt it was necessary to resume the conversation.

"Have you lived long with the Spoelmanns, Countess?" he asked.

"A fairly long time," she answered, and appeared to calculate. "Fairly long. I have lived through so much, have had so many experiences, that I naturally cannot reckon to a day. But it was shortly after the blessing—soon after the blessing was vouchsafed to me."

"The blessing?" asked Klaus Heinrich.

"Of course," she said decidedly and with some agitation. "For the blessing happened to me when the number of my experiences had become too great, and the bow had reached breaking point, to use a metaphor. You are so young," she continued, forgetting to address him by his title, "so ignorant of all that makes the world so miserable and so depraved, that you can form no conception of what I have had to suffer. I brought an action in America which involved the appearance of several generals. Things came to light which were more than my temper could stand. I had to clear out several barracks without succeeding in bringing to light every loose woman. They hid themselves in the cupboards, some even under the floors, and that's why they continue torturing me beyond measure at nights. I should at once go back to my Schloss in Burgundy if the rain did not come through the roofs. The Spoelmanns knew that, and that is why it was so obliging of them to let me live with them indefinitely, my only duty being to put the innocent Imma on her guard against the world. Only of course my health suffers from my having the women sitting at nights on my chest and forcing me to look at their disgusting faces. And that is why I ask you