Page:T.M. Royal Highness.djvu/269

Rh she was unceasingly exposed. And then the blessing fell to her."

"What blessing? She told me about that too. What was the blessing, Miss Spoelmann?"

"The blessing consisted in a mental disturbance. At the crisis of her troubles something in her cracked—that's the expression she used to me—so that she no longer needed to face life and to bring a clear, sober mind to bear upon it, but was permitted, so to speak, to let herself go, to relax the tension of her nerves and to drivel when she liked. In a word, the blessing was that she went wrong in her head."

"Certainly I was under the impression," said Klaus Heinrich, "that the Countess was letting herself go when she drivelled."

"That's how it is, Prince. She is quite conscious of drivelling, and often laughs as she does so, or lets her hearers understand that she doesn't mean any harm by it. Her strangeness is a beneficent disorder, which she can control to a certain extent, and which she allows herself to indulge in. It is, if you prefer it, a want of"

"Of self-restraint," said Klaus Heinrich, and looked down at his reins.

"Right, of self-restraint," she repeated, and looked at him. "You don't seem to approve of that want, Prince."

"I consider as a general rule," he answered quietly, "that it is not right to let oneself go and to make oneself at home, but that self-restraint should always be exercised, whatever the circumstances."

"Your Highness's doctrine," she answered, "is a praise worthy austerity." Then she pouted, and, wagging her dark head in its three-cornered hat, she added in her broken voice: "I'll tell you something, Highness, and please note it well. If your Eminence is not inclined to show a little sympathy and indulgence and mildness, I shall have to