rop his hand, and, looking around quickly to
see what had happened, she forgot to end her sentence in the emotion
caused by the sight of his face. A very fury of anger had surcharged his
eyes and swelled the veins upon his temples.

"So!" he said, in a low tone that almost shook with intense and angry
feeling, "that is why I may not come! He goes, does he? _Bete que je
suis_, that I did not comprehend before!"

Rosina stared at him, motionless, for the space of perhaps ten seconds,
and then an utter contempt filled her, and every other consideration
fled.

She ran up two or three steps, crossed the hall, and passed the
_Portier_ like a flash, flew up the one flight of stairs that led to her
corridor, and broke in upon Ottillie with a lack of dignity such as she
was rarely guilty of.

"Ottillie," she exclaimed, panting under the weight of many mixed
feelings, "I want to leave for Constance by the first train that goes in
the morning. I don't care if it is at six o'clock, I'll get up. Ring and
find out about everything, and then see to the bill and all. I _must_
go!"

Ottillie stood there, and her clever fingers were already unfastening
her mistress' hat-pins.

"Madame may rest assured," she said quietly, "all shall be as she
desires."

* * * * *

Meanwhile below stairs Von Ibn had entered the cafe, lit a cigarette and
taken up one of the evening journals.

He appeared to look over the pages of the latter with an interest that
was intent and unfeigned.

But was it so?

Chapter Nine

"I shall certainly not tell Molly one word about these latest
developments," Rosina said firmly to herself, and she remade the
resolution not once but a hundred times during the train ride of that
early Wednesday morning. She was too tired from excess of emotion, and
no balance of much-needed sleep, to feel anything but unhappy over the
termination of the preceding evening.

Everything was over now, and the only glory to be reaped in any
direction would be the dignified way in which Molly should be kept in
ignorance of all that had occurred.

Outside, the freshness of a Suabian morning lay over valley and
mountain. The country was beautiful with the charm of midsummer's
immediate promise, which spread over the fields of ripening grain and
lost itself among the threading rivulets, or in the shadow of forest and
mountain. The white-plastered farmhouses with the stable-door at one
end, t