Lieschen answered: ‘Forgive me, your Highness,
dearest lady!’
‘You offered yourself here unasked?’
‘Have you written to others besides your sister?’
‘Seldom, princess; I do not remember.’
‘You know the obligation of signatures to letters?’
‘You have been remiss in not writing to me,
child.’
‘Oh, princess! I did not dare to.’
‘You have not written to me?’
‘Ah! princess, how dared I?’
‘Are you speaking truthfully?’
The unhappy girls stood trembling. Ottilia spared
them the leap into the gulfs of confession. Her
intuitive glance, assisted by a combination of minor
facts, had read the story of their misdeeds in a minute.
She sent them down to the carriage, suffering her
culprits to kiss her fingers; while she said to one:
‘This might be a fable of a pair of mice.’
When she was gone, after many fits of musing, the
signification of it was revealed to my slower brain.
I felt that it could not but be an additional shock
to the regal pride of such a woman that these little
maidens should have been permitted to act forcibly
on her destiny. The mystery of the letters was
easily explained as soon as a direct suspicion fell
on one of the girls who lived in my neighbourhood and
the other who was near the princess’s person.
Doubtless the revelation of their effective mouse
plot had its humiliating bitterness for her on a day
of heavy oppression, smile at it as she subsequently
might. The torture of heart with which I twisted
the meaning of her words about the pair of mice to
imply that the pair had conspired to make a net for
an eagle and had enmeshed her, may have struck a vein
of the truth. I could see no other antithesis
to the laudable performance of the single mouse of
fable. Lieschen, when she next appeared in the
character of nurse, met my inquiries by supplicating
me to imitate her sister’s generous mistress,
and be merciful.
She remarked by-and-by, of her own accord: ’Princess
Ottilia does not regret that she had us educated.’
A tender warmth crept round me in thinking that a
mind thus lofty would surely be, however severe in
its insight, above regrets and recantations.
I GAIN A PERCEPTION OF PRINCELY STATE
I had a visit from Prince Ernest, nominally one of
congratulation on my escape. I was never in my
life so much at any man’s mercy: he might
have fevered me to death with reproaches, and I expected
them on hearing his name pronounced at the door.
I had forgotten the ways of the world. For some
minutes I listened guardedly to his affable talk.
My thanks for the honour done me were awkward, as
if they came upon reflection. The prince was
particularly civil and cheerful. His relative,
he said, had written of me in high terms—the
very highest, declaring that I was blameless in the
matter, and that, though he had sent the horse back
to my stables, he fully believed in the fine qualities
of the animal, and acknowledged his fault in making
it a cause of provocation. To all of which I assented
with easy nods.
