I was looking at a man of huge stature, of the stiffest build, whose shoulders showed me their full breadth while he stood displaying frontwards the open of his hand in a salute.

‘Schwartz!’ I called.  Janet started, imagining some fierce interjection.  The giant did not stir.

But others had heard.  A lady stepped forward.  ’Dear Mr. Harry Richmond!  Then you are better?  We had most alarming news of you.’

I bowed to the Frau von Dittmarsch, anciently Miss Sibley.

‘The princess?’

‘She is here.’

Frau von Dittmarsch clasped Miss Goodwin’s hand.  I was touching Ottilia’s.  A veil partly swathed her face.  She trembled:  the breeze robbed me of her voice.

Our walk down the pier was almost in silence.  Miss Goodwin assumed the guardianship of the foreign ladies.  I had to break from them and provide for my aunt Dorothy and Janet.

‘They went over in a little boat, they were so impatient.  Who is she?’ Dorothy Beltham asked.

‘The Princess Ottilia,’ said Janet.

‘Are you certain?  Is it really, Harry?’

I confirmed it, and my aunt said, ’I should have guessed it could be no other; she has a foreign grace.’

‘General Goodwin was with them when the boat came in from the island,’ said Janet.  ’He walked up to Harry’s father, and you noticed, aunty, that the ladies stood away, as if they wished to be unobserved, as we did, and pulled down their veils.  They would not wait for our boat.  We passed them crossing.  People joked about the big servant over-weighing the wherry.’

Dorothy Beltham thought the water too rough for little boats.

‘She knows what a sea is,’ I said.

Janet gazed steadily after the retreating figures, and then commended me to the search for rooms.  The end of it was that I abandoned my father’s suite to them.  An accommodating linen-draper possessed of a sea-view, and rooms which hurled the tenant to the windows in desire for it, gave me harbourage.

Till dusk I scoured the town to find Miss Goodwin, without whom there was no clue to the habitation I was seeking, and I must have passed her blindly again and again.  My aunt Dorothy and Janet thanked me for my consideration in sitting down to dine with them; they excused my haste to retire.  I heard no reproaches except on account of my not sending them word of my illness.  Janet was not warm.  She changed in colour and voice when I related what I had heard from Miss Goodwin, namely, that ’some one’ had informed the princess I was in a dying state.  I was obliged to offer up my father as a shield for Ottilia, lest false ideas should tarnish the image of her in their minds.  Janet did not speak of him.  The thought stood in her eyes; and there lies the evil of a sore subject among persons of one household:  they have not to speak to exhibit their minds.