ladies. And in its report of the fancy-dress charity bazaar, which took place in the middle of January in the Town Hall—a smart function, in which Miss Spoelmann, at the urgent request of the Committee, acted as seller—no small space was devoted to describing how Prince Klaus Heinrich, when the Court was making a round of the bazaar, had stopped before Miss Spoelmann's stall, how he had bought a piece or two of fancy glass (for Miss Spoelmann was selling porcelain and glass), and had lingered a good eight or ten minutes at her stall. It said nothing about the topic of the conversation. And yet it had not been without importance.
The Court (with the exception of Albrecht) had appeared in the Town Hall about noon. When Klaus Heinrich, with his newly bought pieces of glass in tissue paper on his knee, drove back to the "Hermitage," he had announced his intention of visiting Delphinenort and inspecting the Schloss in its renovated state, on the same occasion viewing Mr. Spoelmann's collection of glass. For three or four old pieces of glass had been included in Miss Spoelmann's stock which her father himself had given to the bazaar out of his collection, and one of them Klaus Heinrich had bought.
He saw himself again in a semicircle of people, stared at, alone, in front of Miss Spoelmann, and separated from her by the stall-counter, with its vases, jugs, its white and coloured groups of porcelain. He saw her in her red fancy dress, which, made in one piece, clung close to her neat though childish figure, while it exposed dark shoulders and arms, which were round and firm and yet like those of a child just by the wrist. He saw the gold ornament, half garland and half diadem, in the jet of her billowy hair, that showed a tendency to fall in smooth wisps on her forehead, her big, black, inquiring eyes in the pearly-white face, her full and tender mouth, pouting with habitual scorn when she spoke—and round about her in the great vaulted
