So he saluted her, with such deference as is due to a countess from
a tradesman, and yet with unforgotten tremors waking in his staid
body. But the strangest was yet to be seen, for he noted now that
this was not a handsome woman in middle life but a young girl.

"I do not understand," he said, aloud: "for you are Dorothy. And yet
it seems to me that you are not the Countess Dorothy who is Heitman
Michael's wife."

And the girl tossed her fair head, with that careless lovely gesture
which the Countess had forgotten. "Heitman Michael is well enough,
for a nobleman, and my brother is at me day and night to marry the
man: and certainly Heitman Michael's wife will go in satin and
diamonds at half the courts of Christendom, with many lackeys to
attend her. But I am not to be thus purchased."

"So you told a boy that I remember, very long ago. Yet you married
Heitman Michael, for all that, and in the teeth of a number of other
fine declarations."

"Oh, no, not I," said this Dorothy, wondering. "I never married
anybody. And Heitman Michael has never married anybody, either, old
as he is. For he is twenty-eight, and looks every day of it! But who
are you, friend, that have such curious notions about me?"

"That question I will answer, just as though it were put reasonably.
For surely you perceive I am Jurgen."

"I never knew but one Jurgen. And he is a young man, barely come of