For hours they rode on in silence. Barney wanted to talk with his
companion, but as king he found nothing to say to her. The girl's
mind was filled with morbid reflections of the past few hours and
dumb terror for the future. She would keep her promise to the king;
but after--life would not be worth the living; why should she live?
She glanced at the man beside her in the light of the coming dawn.
Ah, why was he so like her American in outward appearances only?
Their own mothers could scarce have distinguished them, and yet in
character no two men could have differed more widely. The man turned
to her.
"We are almost there," he said. "You must be very tired."
The words reflected a consideration that had never been a
characteristic of Leopold. The girl began to wonder if there might
not possibly be a vein of nobility in the man, after all, that she
had never discovered. Since she had entered his apartments at Blentz
he had been in every way a different man from the Leopold she had
known of old. The boldness of his escape from Blentz supposed a
courage that the king had never given the slightest indication of in
the past. Could it be that he was making a genuine effort to become
a man--to win her respect?
They were approaching Lustadt as the sun rose. A troop of horse was
just emerging from the north gate. As it neared them they saw that
the cavalrymen wore the uniforms of the Royal Horse Guard.
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