"What are you going to do about Prince von Graven?"
"Oh, bother the Prince. I have no time to think of him to-day, nor for the whole week. Think of all it means to me! To appear instead of the great Ventura!"
"I’m sorry to be a wet blanket, but I must tell you----"
"No, no, no. I won’t listen," she cried vehemently, putting her fingers in her ears and shaking her head vigorously. "Herr Grumpel said I must not have anything to excite me between now and the concert."
"There will be no concert at all for you if you do not listen to me, Fräulein," I declared, as soon as I had a chance of getting a word in.
"Oh, I hate you, I hate you! Go away!" she cried like a child.
I sat on stolidly until she understood that I was really in earnest and that she could not get rid of me in that way, and then her manner changed suddenly. She became earnest and looked at me almost piteously.
"Of course I didn’t mean that. If there is anything I ought to know which really does concern the concert, of course I will listen."
"You have not asked about Fräulein Althea," I reminded her.
"Of course I know she is all right or I should have heard. Has she sent you now to frighten me?"
"I have not come to frighten you at all, and she does not know that I have come. I wish only to warn you."
"It is very much the same thing," she said pettishly again.
"Not at all the same thing, I assure you. No one would be more pleased if you were to make a great hit than I should be. But the fact is that before a week passes you are much more likely to be in the same plight as Fräulein Althea than singing at a concert, unless you have cleared up this matter of the Prince."
"Do you mean they would try to arrest me? ME?"
"A great many things have happened since I saw you, and this morning I had it from a high authority that that step is under consideration. The one arrest has been decided on because Fräulein Althea is the daughter of Baron von Ringheim, you are his granddaughter and can judge whether in such a case you would be likely to be acceptable to the Kaiser as the chief performer at a State concert."
The colour left her face as she listened, and when I ended she burst into a storm of tears. "You are cruel! It is infamous! Why persecute me in this way?" she cried over and over again. She was almost hysterical.