s, and the real beauty of the gardens
was revealed to her for the first time. Strange flowers she had never
seen before, plants with great broad leaves, grass-like carpet, and
giant ferns, unlike anything she had plucked in the valleys and the
mountains. It was all a fairy-land. There were marble urns with hanging
vines, and marble statues. She loitered in this pebbled path and that,
forgetful of her errand. Even had her mind been filled with the
importance of it, she did not know where to go to find the proper
entrance.

A hand grasped her rudely by the arm.

"What are you doing here?" thundered the head gardener. "Be off with
you! Don't you know that no one is allowed in here without a permit?"

Gretchen wrenched free her arm. She was angry.

"How dare you touch me like that?"

Something in her glance, which was singularly arrogant, cooled even the
warm-blooded Hermann.

"But you live in Dreiberg and ought to know."

"You could have told me without bruising my arm," defiantly.

"I am sorry if I hurt you, but you ought to have known better. By which
sentry did you pass?" for there was that about her beauty which made
him suspicious regarding the sentry's imperviousness to it.

"Hermann!"

Gretchen and the head gardener whirled. Through a hedge which divided
the formal gardens from the tennis and archery grounds came a young
woman in riding-habit. She carried a book in one hand and a riding-whip
in the other.

"What is the trouble, Hermann?" she inquired. "Your voice was something
high."

"Your Highness, this young woman here had the impudence to walk into the
gardens and stroll about as nice as you please," indignantly.

"Has she stolen any flowers or trod on any of the beds?"

"Why, no, your Highness; but--"

"What is the harm, then?"

"But it is not customary, your Highness. If we permitted this on the
part of the people, the gardens would be ruined in a week."

"We, you and I, Hermann," said her highness, with a smile that won
Gretchen on the spot, "we will overlook this first offense. Perhaps this
young lady had some errand and lost her way."

"Yes, Highness," replied Gretchen eagerly.

"Ah! You may go, Hermann."

"Your highness alone with--"

"Go at once," kindly, but with royal firmness.

Hermann bowed, gathered up his pruning knives and scissors which he had
let fall, and stalked down the path. What was it? he wondered. She was a
princess in all things save her lack of coldness towar