the question whether I could let them escape from sight. They wound up
the roadway, two figures and one following, now dots against the sky, now
a single movement in the valley, now concealed, buried under billows of
forest, making the low noising of the leaves an intolerable whisper of
secresy, and forward I rushed again to see them rounding a belt of firs
or shadowed by rocks, solitary on shorn fields, once more dipping to the
forest, and once more emerging, vanishing. When I had grown sure of
their reappearance from some point of view or other, I spied for them in
vain. My destiny, whatever it might be, fluttered over them; to see them
seemed near the knowing of it, and not to see them, deadly. I galloped,
so intent on the three in the distance, that I did not observe a horseman
face toward me, on the road: it was Prince Hermann. He raised his hat; I
stopped short, and he spoke:

'Mr. Richmond, permit me to apologize to you. I have to congratulate
you, it appears. I was not aware.--However, the princess has done me the
favour to enlighten me. How you will manage, I can't guess, but that is
not my affair. I am a man of honour; and, on my honour, I conceived that
I was invited here to decide, as my habit is, on the spot, if I would, or
if I would not. I speak clearly to you, no doubt. There could be no
hesitation in the mind of a man of sense. My way is prompt and blunt;
I am sorry I gave you occasion to reflect on it. There! I have been
deceived--deceived myself, let's say. Sharp methods play the devil with
you now and then. To speak the truth,--perhaps you won't care to listen
to it,--family arrangements are the best; take my word for it, they are
the best. And in the case of princesses of the Blood!--Why, look you,
I happen to be suitable. It 's a matter of chance, like your height,
complexion, constitution. One is just what one is born to be, eh? You
have your English notions, I my German; but as a man of the world in the
bargain, and "gentleman," I hope, I should say, that to take a young