oe that rested on the fender. She meant that she would talk no
more to me; that in her estimation, since I had no business to stay, I
was already gone. An impulse seized me. I do not know what I hoped nor
why that moment broke the silence which I had imposed on myself. But I
told her about the little, fair, chubby child at the Castle of
Bartenstein. I watched her closely, but her eyes never strayed from her
shoe-tip. Well, she had never said a word that showed any concern in
such a matter; even I had done little more than look and hint and come.

[Illustration: The firelight played on the hand that held the screen.]

"It's as if they meant me to marry Tote," I ended. Tote was the pet name
by which we called her own eight-year-old daughter.

The Countess broke her wilful silence, but did not change the direction
of her eyes.

"If Tote were of the proper station," she said ironically, "she'd be
just right for you by the time you're both grown up."

"And you'd be mother-in-law?"

"I should be too old to plague you. I should just sit in my corner in
the sun."

"The sun is always in your corner."

"Don't be so complimentary," she said with a sudden twitching of her
lips. "I shall have to stand up and curtsey, and I don't want to.
Besides, you oughtn't to know how to say things like that, ought you,
Caesar?"

Caesar was my--shall I say pet-name?--used when we were alone or with
Count Max, only in a playful satire.

A silence followed for some time. At last she glanced toward me.

"Not gone yet?" said she, raising her brows. "What will the Princess
say?"

"I go when I please," said I, resenting the question as I was meant to
resent it.

"Yes. Certainly not when I please."

Our eyes met now; suddenly she blushed, and then interposed the screen
between herself and me. A glorious thrill of youthful triumph ran
through me; she had paid her first tribute to my manhood in that blush;
the offering was small, but, for its significance, frankincense and
myrrh to me.

"I thought you came to talk about Wetter's Bill," she suggested
presently in a voice lower than her usual tones.

"The deuce take Wetter's Bill," said I.

"I am very interested in it."

"Just now?"

"Even just now, Caesar." I heard a little laugh behind the screen.

"Hammerfeldt hates it," said I.

"Oh, then that settles it. You'll be against us, of course!"

"Why of course?"

"You always do as the Prince tells you, don't you?"

"Unless som