id breathlessly.

But Jean only laughed, and said no more.

The guide had been paying profound deference to Prince Wolfburgh,
keeping close to his heels. Now he swung open a door. "If your
Highnesses will come this way?" he said, bowing profoundly to Lucy.

The little girl started and hurried back to Miss Vance. Her face was
scarlet, and she laughed nervously. Prince Wolfburgh also laughed,
loudly and meaningly. He swore at the old man and went out into the
cloister where his cousin stood smoking.

"Had enough of the old barracks?" said the captain.

"I found I was making too fast running in there," said the prince
uneasily; "I'll waken up and find that girl married to me some day."

"Not so bad a dream," puffed his cousin.

"I'll take a train somewhere," said the prince. "But no matter where I
go, I'll find an American old woman with a girl to marry. They all
carry the Hof Kalender in their pockets, and know every bachelor in
Germany."

The captain watched him attentively. "I don't believe those women
inside mean to drive any marriage bargain with you, Hugo," he said
gruffly. "I doubt whether the little mees would marry you if you asked
her. Her dot, I hear, is e-normous!" waving his hand upward as if to
mountain heights. "And as for beauty, she is a wild rose!"

Now, there were reasons why the captain should rejoice when Hugo allied
himself to the little mees. On the day when he would take these hills
of gold and wild rose to himself, the captain would become the head of
the house of Wolfburgh. It was, perhaps, a mean, ungilded throne, but
by German law no nameless Yankee woman could sit upon it.

The prince looked at Captain Odo. "You cannot put me into a gallop
when I choose to walk," he said. "She's a pretty girl, and a good
girl, and some time I may marry her, but not now."

Odo laughed good-humoredly, and they sauntered down the path together.

The prince had offered to dine with Miss Vance that evening, but sent a
note to say that he was summoned to the Highlands unexpectedly.

"It is adieu, not auf wiedersehen, I fear, with his Highness," Miss
Vance said, folding the note pensively. She had not meant to drive a
marriage bargain, and yet--to have placed a pupil upon even such a
bric-a-brac throne as that of Wolfburgh! She looked thoughtfully at
Lucy's chubby cheeks. A princess? The man was not objectionable in
himself, either--a kindly, overgrown boy. "He told me," said Jean,
"