a table, her back turned to the incomer. Her hair was down. It hung black and glossy on each side of her head, covered her shoulders, and allowed nothing to be seen but a shadow of the childlike quarter profile of her face, which showed white as ivory against the darkness of her hair. There she sat absorbed in her studies, working at the figures in the notebook before her, her lips pressed on the back of her left hand, and her right grasping the pen.
The Countess too was there, also busy writing. She sat some way off under the palms, where Klaus Heinrich had first conversed with her, and wrote sitting upright with her head on one side, a pile of closely scribbled, note-paper lying at her side. The clank of Klaus Heinrich's spurs made her look up. She looked at him with half-closed eyes for two seconds, the long pen poised in her hand, then rose and curtseyed. "Imma," she said, "his Royal Highness Prince Klaus Heinrich is here."
Miss Spoelmann turned quickly round in her basket chair, shook her hair back and gazed without speaking at the intruder with big, startled eyes, until Klaus Heinrich had bid the ladies good-morning with a military salute. Then she said in her broken voice: "Good-morning to you too, Prince. But you are too late for breakfast. We've finished long ago."
Klaus Heinrich laughed.
"Well, it's lucky," he said, "that both parties have had breakfast, for now we can start at once for a ride."
"A ride?"
"Yes, as we agreed."
"We agreed?"
"No, don't say that you've forgotten!" he said pleadingly. "Didn't I promise to show you the country round? Weren't we going for a ride together when it was fine? Well, to-day it's glorious. Just look out …"
"It's not a bad day," she said, "but you go too fast,
