‘Why has no one told me these things before?’ Aribert exclaimed.
‘Princes seldom hear the truth,’ she said.
He was astonished at her coolness, her firmness of assertion, her air of complete acquaintance with the world.
‘Miss Racksole,’ he said, ‘if you will permit me to say it, I have never in my life met a woman like you. May I rely on your sympathy--your support?’
‘I do not know,’ he replied. ‘But you could help me if you would. A woman, when she has brain, always has more brain than a man.’
‘Ah!’ she said ruefully, ‘I have no brains, but I do believe I could help you.’
What prompted her to make that assertion she could not have explained, even to herself. But she made it, and she had a suspicion--a prescience- -that it would be justified, though by what means, through what good fortune, was still a mystery to her.
‘Go to Berlin,’ she said. ‘I see that you must do that; you have no alternative. As for the rest, we shall see. Something will occur. I shall be here. My father will be here. You must count us as your friends.’
He kissed her hand when he left, and afterwards, when she was alone, she kissed the spot his lips had touched again and again. Now, thinking the matter out in the calmness of solitude, all seemed strange, unreal, uncertain to her. Were conspiracies actually possible nowadays? Did queer things actually happen in Europe? And did they actually happen in London hotels? She dined with her father that night.
‘I hear Prince Aribert has left,’ said Theodore Racksole.
‘Yes,’ she assented. She said not a word about their interview.
Chapter Eight ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE OF THE BARONESS
ON the following morning, just before lunch, a lady, accompanied by a maid and a considerable quantity of luggage, came to the Grand Babylon Hôtel. She was a plump, little old lady, with white hair and an old- fashioned bonnet, and she had a quaint, simple smile of surprise at everything in general.
Nevertheless, she gave the impression of belonging to some aristocracy, though not the English aristocracy. Her tone to her maid, whom she addressed in broken English--the girl being apparently English--was distinctly insolent, with the calm, unconscious insolence peculiar to a certain type of Continental nobility. The name on the lady’s card ran thus: ‘Baroness Zerlinski’. She desired rooms on the third floor. It happened that Nella was in the bureau.