.

"What, can't the king see him? Not even the king?"

"King!" she cried, peering at him. "Are you the king?"

Rosa burst out laughing.

"Mother, you must have seen the king a hundred times," she laughed.

"The king, or his ghost--what does it matter?" said Rudolf lightly.

The old woman drew back with an appearance of sudden alarm.

"His ghost? Is he?"

"His ghost!" rang out in the girl's merry laugh. "Why, here's the king
himself, mother. You don't look much like a ghost, sir."

Mother Holf's face was livid now, and her eyes staring fixedly. Perhaps
it shot into her brain that something had happened to the king, and that
this man had come because of it--this man who was indeed the image,
and might have been the spirit, of the king. She leant against the
door post, her broad bosom heaving under her scanty stuff gown. Yet
still--was it not the king?

"God help us!" she muttered in fear and bewilderment.

"He helps us, never fear," said Rudolf Rassendyll. "Where is Count
Rupert?"

The girl had caught alarm from her mother's agitation. "He's upstairs
in the attic at the top of the house, sir," she whispered in frightened
tones, with a glance that fled from her mother's terrified face to
Rudolf's set eyes and steady smile.

What she said was enough for him. He slipped by the old woman and began
to mount the stairs.

The two watched him, Mother Holf as though fascinated, the girl alarmed
but still triumphant: she had done what the king bade her. Rudolf turned
the corner of the first landing and disappeared from their sight. The
old woman, swearing and muttering, stumbled back into her kitchen, set
her stew on the fire, and began to stir it, her eyes set on the flames
and careless of the pot. The girl watched her mother for a moment,
wondering how she could think of the stew, not guessing that she turned
the spoon without a thought of what she did; then she began to crawl,
quickly but noiselessly, up the staircase in the track of Rudolf
Rassendyll. She looked back once: the old woman stirred with a
monotonous circular movement of her fat arm. Rosa, bent half-double,
skimmed upstairs, till she came in sight of the king whom she was so
proud to serve. He was on the top landing now, outside the door of a
large attic where Rupert of Hentzau was lodged. She saw him lay his hand
on the latch of the door; his other hand rested in the pocket of his
coat. From the room no sound came; Rupert may have heard the step
o