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“Because a certain Princess was indiscreet enough to show her curiosity about you,” corrected the fair stranger.

“But look here! I’ll apologize to the Princess, and offer to pay for the plate.”

“Then you do want to see the Princess?” said the young girl smiling; “you are like the others.”

“Bother the Princess! I want to see YOU. And I don’t see how they can prevent it if I choose to remain.”

“Very easily. You will find that there is something wrong with your passport, and you will be sent on to Pumpernickel for examination. You will unwittingly transgress some of the laws of the town and be ordered to leave it. You will be shadowed by the police until you quarrel with them–like a free American–and you are conducted to the frontier. Perhaps you will strike an officer who has insulted you, and then you are finished on the spot.”

The American’s crest rose palpably until it cocked his straw hat over his curls.

“Suppose I am content to risk it–having first laid the whole matter and its trivial cause before the American Minister, so that he could make it hot for this whole caboodle of a country if they happened to ‘down me.’ By Jove! I shouldn’t mind being the martyr of an international episode if they’d spare me long enough to let me get the first ‘copy’ over to the other side.” His eyes sparkled.

“You could expose them, but they would then deny the whole story, and you have no evidence. They would demand to know your informant, and I should be disgraced, and the Princess, who is already talked about, made a subject of scandal. But no matter! It is right that an American’s independence shall not be interfered with.”

She raised the hem of her handkerchief to her blue eyes and slightly turned her head aside. Hoffman gently drew the handkerchief away, and in so doing possessed himself of her other hand.

“Look here, Miss–Miss–Elsbeth. You know I wouldn’t give you away, whatever happened. But couldn’t I get hold of that photographer–I saw him, he wanted me to sit to him–and make him tell me?”

“He wanted you to sit to him,” she said hurriedly, “and did you?”

“No,” he replied. “He was a little too fresh and previous, though I thought he fancied some resemblance in me to somebody else.”

“Ah!” She said something to herself in German which he did not understand, and then added aloud:

“You did well; he is a bad man, this photographer. Promise me you shall not sit for him.”

“How can I if I’m fired out of the place like this?” He added ruefully, “But I’d like to make him give himself away to me somehow.”

“He will not, and if he did he would deny it afterward. Do not go near him nor see him. Be careful that he does not photograph you with his instantaneous instrument when you are passing. Now you must go. I must see the Princess.”

“Let me go, too. I will explain it to her,” said Hoffman.

She stopped, looked at him keenly, and attempted to withdraw her hands. “Ah, then it IS so. It is the Princess you wish to see. You are curious–you, too; you wish to see this lady who is interested in you. I ought to have known it. You are all alike.”

He met her gaze with laughing frankness, accepting her outburst as a charming feminine weakness, half jealousy, half coquetry–but retained her hands.

“Nonsense,” he said. “I wish to see her that I may have the right to see you–that you shall not lose your place here through me; that I may come again.”

“You must never come here again.”

“Then you must come where I am. We will meet somewhere when you have an afternoon off. You shall show me the town–the houses of my ancestors–their tombs; possibly–if the Grand Duke rampages– the probable site of my own.”