LITMIR.BIZ

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for a moment in a state of distressful indecision. Mildenhall leaned across to him.

      “My dear host,” he begged, “I wish, if you please, to withdraw my thoughtless request. I have read what a very great man who stayed with you for a month wrote of your pictures and statuary, and his book is one of the few classics of my life, but believe me I should be perfectly miserable if I induced you to change any decision you have come to about your treasures or to alter your arrangements in any way. I have been perfectly honest. If you offered me your keys and yourself as cicerone I should put on my hat and walk out of the house for fear you would imperil the safety of any one of your—”

      Mildenhall broke off in his speech. Louder than ever before that night they could hear the booming of heavy guns. Nearer at hand the rifle fire had become more persistent. For a moment a blaze of light filled the room so that the delicately shaded lamps seemed to exist no longer, and everyone covered his eyes. There was the sound of an explosion. Then silence. Mr. Benjamin smiled and patted the Princess Sophie’s hand.

      “That mine,” he told her, “was at least ten miles away. It is our own people who are making all the disturbance. If the Germans enter the city to-night, believe me, they will do so in orderly fashion. They will be disciplined troops and we shall have nothing to fear from them except what we feel inside—the humiliation, the sorrow,” he concluded, with his hand over his heart, “which comes with the passing of a great nation. If all negotiations fail, if the Germans enter the city, we must face what lies before us, but for the moment, believe me, we are in no danger.”

      “All the same,” Mrs. Schwarz said, wiping her eyes and rising to her feet, “I think we must go. The streets soon will not be safe.”

      The Baroness pushed aside her ice and lit a cigarette.

      “My car is not yet here,” she confided. “I agree with Mr. Benjamin. We are as safe here as anywhere. There will be no fighting in this quarter. If the Germans enter it will be as the result of negotiations.”

      “Negotiations or no negotiations,” the Princess declared, “I should like my car, Leopold.”

      “And I,” Mrs. Schwarz demanded.

      The single manservant disappeared. The sound of the cars outside was heard almost at once. Coffee was served and, in the temporary absence of disturbing interruptions, everyone seemed to recover himself a little. Very few noticed the quiet entrance of Marius Blute through a door just behind the banker. He pushed a slip of paper into Mr. Benjamin’s hand and was gone in a moment, slipping behind the screen and out through the door. Leopold Benjamin, with a word of excuse to Mrs. Schwarz, with whom he had been conversing, read the single line, half closed his eyes and then looked across to where Patricia was watching him. The slightest inclination of his head was sufficient. In a moment she was standing by his side. He handed her the slip of paper. She read it and they passed out into the hall together.

      Heinrich, the single manservant who had been visible during the service of dinner except for the seneschal and aide from the wine cellar, threw open the door.

      “The automobiles await Her Highness the Princess von Dorlingen, the Baroness von Ballinstrode and Dr. and Mrs. Schwarz,” he announced.

      The Baroness glanced around the room.

      “But our host?” she exclaimed. “I rather fancy that was an urgent message he received,” Mildenhall confided. “I saw that funny little man Blute slip in from behind the screen with a note.”

      “We’d better wait for a short time, I suppose,” she suggested. “I will show you the music room. It is very famous but there are no treasures there.”

      Outside in the great hall Heinrich was standing by the opened door and the cars were in line. There was no sign of Patricia.

      “The little girl secretary seems to be a sort of hostess,” Mildenhall reflected. “Perhaps we ought to see if she is about.”

      “I do not see any necessity,” the Baroness declared, as one of the maids brought her cloak. “I think we go together—you and 1.1 drop you where you like. You change your clothes, perhaps, before you go to the ball?”

      “I must,” he assented. “For that I shall have to go to the Embassy.”

      “Would you like to drive with me, or would you rather walk?” she asked.

      “I should not feel in the least happy,” he assured her, “if I let you go alone. There are all sorts of wild people in the streets.”

      “Perhaps you had better take me to my apartment first, then,” she proposed.

      “It will give me great pleasure.”

      “Come then.”

      “Mr. Mildenhall!”

      He turned around. Patricia was coming towards him across the hall.

      “Could you please come with me for a moment or two? I have a message for you.”

      “Of course.”

      He glanced towards the Baroness with a gesture of helplessness. The latter looked across at Patricia.

      “The little lady can give you her message quickly,” she suggested. “I will wait.”

      Patricia turned to her courteously.

      “I cannot ask you to share in the message,” she explained, “because it is rather important and very private, but if Mr. Mildenhall is driving you home, would you mind waiting in the dining-room? Heinrich will look after you.”

      “Thank you,” the Baroness said. “Heinrich can show me into the car. I shall sit there and await Herr Mildenhall. Do not keep him too long. He has to change into uniform and make himself very beautiful for the ball.”

      She wrapped herself a little more closely in her ermine cloak. In the soft gleam from the shaded electric light near which she stood her anxious expression of a few minutes ago seemed entirely to have passed. There was something Grecian about her beauty, her superbly graceful pose as she stood there smiling with her eyes fixed upon Mildenhall’s.

      “You will not be long?” she asked.

      “A minute or two only,” he promised.

      CHAPTER VI

       Table of Contents

      Patricia led her companion almost in silence across the hall into the library. Neither of them found speech an easy matter. Mildenhall, curiously enough, was a little ashamed at the tumult of sensations which had suddenly disturbed the even progress of his life. Patricia, because of this moment of deep anxiety for all that she held dear in life, felt an irritated sense of disquietude of which she also was ashamed. She turned on two of the lights in the library, motioned him to close the door and listened for a moment. There were footsteps in the street outside, but not the sort of footsteps for which she was listening—wild, undisciplined footsteps these, mostly, of men and women running, or the shuffling footsteps of the Viennese beggars seeking always for shelter. What she was dreading was the iron tramp of soldiers, the voice of discipline, the harsh, raucous commands from an officer of the invaders.

      “I must not keep you long, Mr. Mildenhall,” she said. “Please listen. Air. Benjamin is a strange man. He is the kindest and best person in the world, but he has queer ideas. He is mortified to-night because you asked to see his pictures and he could not show them to you.”

      “But that is ridiculous,” Mildenhall told her. “I was sorry afterwards that I had asked. I do hope he realized that it wasn’t idle curiosity.”

      “He never thought that,” she assured him. “It is odd how understanding he is. He seemed to divine that you were a lover of beautiful things, that you shared his own taste to some extent.”

      “It is remarkable that he should

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