"Quick, quick, little Gretchen," he said, pulling off his hat and gloves, and unbuckling his sword. "A glass of kirsch, and more logs on the fire! I am cold through and through, and wet into the bargain."
"But--but, father, have you not been with Monsieur Maurice?" I said, anxiously.
"Yes, of course; but that was an hour ago, and more. I have been over to Kierberg since then, in the rain."
He had left Monsieur Maurice an hour ago--a whole, wretched, dismal hour, during which I might have been so happy!
"You told me to stay here till you came back," I said, scarce able to keep down the tears that started to my eyes.
"And--and I might have gone up to Monsieur Maurice, after all?"
My father looked at me gravely--poured out a second glass of kirsch--drew his chair to the front of the fire, and said:--
I had felt all along that there was something wrong, and now I was certain of it.
"What do you mean, father?" I said, my heart beating so that I could scarcely speak. "What is the matter?"
"May the devil make broth of my bones, if I know!" said my father, tugging savagely at his moustache.
"Monsieur Maurice, it seems, is not to have so much liberty," he said, after a moment. "He is not to walk in the grounds oftener than twice a week; and then only with a soldier at his heels. And he is not to go beyond half a mile from the Château in any direction. And he is to hold no communication whatever with any person, or persons, either in-doors or out-of-doors, except such as are in direct charge of his rooms or his person. And--and heaven knows what other confounded regulations besides! I wish the Baron von Bulow had been in Spitzbergen before he put it into the King's head to send him here at all!"
"But--but he is not to be locked up?" I faltered, almost in a whisper.
"Well, no--not exactly that; but I am to post a sentry in the corridor, outside his door."
"Then the King is afraid that Monsieur Maurice will run away!"
"I don't know--I suppose so," groaned my father.
I sat silent for a moment, and then burst into a flood of tears.
"Poor Monsieur Maurice!" I cried. "He has coughed so all the Winter; and he was longing for the Spring! We were to have gathered primroses in the woods when the warm days came back again--and--and--and I suppose the King doesn't mean that I am not to speak to him any more!"