It was not, however, until they had finished their inspection of the palace and had passed out into the gardens by the _Cour des Princes_ that an opportunity offered to make trial of the plan he had conceived. They had strolled under the orange trees beside that long stretch of velvet lawn towards what is known as the basin of Apollo and had found seats on the marble coping of the fountain. As they sat there facing each other amid the perfume of the flowers and the spice of the shrubbery, the balmy breath of summer fanning their cheeks and the genial glow of a tempered June sun bathing them, the girl’s eye fell for the first time upon the ring on Grey’s little finger, and she gave an involuntary start of surprise.
“Oh, is it you, then?” she cried, and there was something of awe in her voice, though her eyes were smiling. “But no,” she added, quickly, “that cannot be. I do not understand, Uncle Max.”
“Nor I, child,” Grey replied, smiling back at her. He had not observed her glance, and her exclamation had startled him. She took his hand in her long, white, rose-tipped fingers and held it up before his eyes, the ring glinting in the sunshine.
“That!” she said. “What does it mean, your wearing it?”
“Mean?” he hesitated, wondering. “Why should it mean anything? Has not a gentleman a right to wear a ring if his fancy runs that way?”
“Oh, yes, of course; some rings; but no ordinary gentleman has a right to wear that one.”
“But suppose I am not an ordinary gentleman?” he pursued. “Suppose I have a title and bear arms, have I not a right to engrave those arms upon gold and wear them on my finger?”
She looked at him very seriously from out her deep-set, long-lashed eyes of purplish blue, and then she said:
“But it is the ring of the Crown Prince. And you are not the Crown Prince. If you were you could not be my uncle.”
Grey’s heart leaped. His decision had been confirmed. She was not trying to put him on a throne to which he had no more right than those workmen who were repairing the stone margin of the great canal a hundred yards away. Yet, at the same time, she had filled him with a new perplexity. It was evident that the ring was quite familiar to her. Therefore it could hardly be von Einhard’s, and Lindenwald’s assertion must not only have been false but knowingly false, and with an object. If the Fraülein von Altdorf knew the ring as the Crown Prince’s ring, Lindenwald must also have known it as such. It was for that reason he did not wish Grey to keep it. He feared, probably, just such a revelation as had come about. These points were plain enough, but the whole intricate problem was growing more and more involved. Its likeness to a maze again recurred. With every effort to extricate himself he seemed to get further and more bewilderingly entangled. And once more he was tempted to leave the path, which seemed to turn and turn again on itself, and to cut his way through thicket and underbrush regardless of consequences.
