That could wait. I threw
my paper onto the table.
"Do you know, sir," said I, "that thought echoes my own?"
"Let us for the moment put ourselves into the background," said the
Prince. "What do you know about her Serene Highness the Princess
Hildegarde; her history?"
"Very little; proceed."
"But tell me what you know."
"I know that her father was driven to a gambler's grave and that her
mother died of a broken heart, and that the man who caused all this
wishes to break the heart of the daughter, too."
"Scandal, all scandal," said the Prince. "Who ever heard of a broken
heart outside of a romantic novel? I see that the innkeeper has been
holding your ear. Ah, that innkeeper, that innkeeper! Certainly some
day there will come a reckoning."
"Yes, indeed," said I. "Beware of him."
"It was twenty years ago," said the Prince. "It is beyond the recall.
But let me proceed. Not many years ago there was a Prince, a very bad
fellow."
"Most of them are."
"He married a woman too good for him," went on the Prince, as though he
had not heard.
"And another is about to do likewise.
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