Page:T.M. Royal Highness.djvu/295

Rh of greeting. The gilding of the furniture looked dull, as the park beyond the glass door lay in a damp mist.

Klaus Heinrich exchanged a handshake with the daughter of the house, and kissed the Countess's hand, while he gently raised her from the courtly curtsey she had begun, as usual, to make.

"You see, summer has come," he said to Imma Spoelmann, offering her the rose. It was the first time he had brought her flowers.

"How courtly of you!" she said. "Thanks, Prince. And what a beauty!" she went on in honest admiration (a thing she hardly ever showed), and held out her small, ringless hands for the glorious flower, whose dewy petals exquisitely at the edges. "Are there such fine roses here? Where did you get it?" And she bent her dark head eagerly over it.

Her eyes were full of horror when she looked up again.

"It doesn't smell!" she said, and a look of disgust showed round her mouth. "Wait, though—it smells of decay!" she said. "What's this you have brought me, Prince?" And her big black eyes in her pale face seemed to glow with questioning horror.

"Yes," he said, "I'm sorry; that's a way our roses have. It's from the bush in one of the courts of the Old Schloss. Have you never heard of it? There's something hangs by that. People say that one day it will begin to smell exquisite."

She seemed not to be listening to him. "It seems as if it had no soul," she said, and looked at the rose. "But it's perfectly beautiful, that one must allow. Well, that's a doubtful joke on nature's part, Prince. All the same, Prince, thanks for your attention. And as it comes from your ancestral Schloss, one must regard it with due reverence."

She put the rose in a glass by her plate. A swansdown