Page:T.M. Royal Highness.djvu/265

Rh result of the canter—for which he had had to brace him self up, for, though a decent figure on a horse, his left hand prevented him from being a strong rider—or for some other reason. After leaving the pine-wood they rode along the fiuiet high-road between meadows and furrowed fields, with a peasant's hut or a country inn here and there. As they drew near the next wood, he asked in a low voice:

"Won't you fulfil your promise and tell me about the Countess? What is your companion's history?"

"She is my friend," she answered, "and in a sense my governess too, although she did not come to us till I was grown up. That was three years ago, in New York, and the Countess was then in a terrible state. She was on the brink of starvation," said Miss Spoelmann, and as she said it she fastened her big black eyes with a searching, startled look on Klaus Heinrich.

"Really starvation?" he asked, and returned her look.&hellip;" Do please go on."

"Yes, I said that too when she came to us, and although I, of course, saw quite well that her mind was slightly affected, she made such an impression upon me that I persuaded my father to let her be my companion."

"What took her to America? Is she a countess by birth?" asked Klaus Heinrich.

"Not a countess, but of noble birth, brought up in refined and luxurious surroundings, sheltered and protected, as she expressed it to me, from every wind, because from childhood she had been impressionable and sensitive. But then she married a Count Löwenjoul, a cavalry captain—a strange specimen of the aristocracy, according to her account—not quite up to the mark, to put it mildly."

"What was wrong with him?" asked Klaus Heinrich.