“If he’s gone, then don’t let us think about him any more.”

“Nay, ma’am, I now set out for Cambridge.  If I may not meet him fairly in duel and have my chance of honourably removing him from a world that has had enough of him, I would fain in my turn box his ears.”

But Priscilla caught him by both arms.  “Why, Fritzi,” she cried, “he might remove you and not you him—­and from a world that hasn’t had nearly enough of you.  Fritzi, you cannot leave me.  I won’t let you go.  I wish I had never told you.  Don’t let us talk of it ever again.  It is hateful to me.  I—­I can’t bear it.”  And she looked into his face with something very like tears in her eyes.

Of course Fritzing stayed.  How could he go away even for one hour, even in search of a cook, when such dreadful things happened?  He was bowed down by the burden of his responsibilities.  He went into his sitting-room and spent the morning striding up and down it between the street door and the door into the kitchen,—­a stride and a half one way, and a stride and a half back back again,—­doing what all evildoers have to do sooner or later, cudgelling his brains for a way out of life’s complications:  and every now and then the terribleness of what had happened to his Princess, his guarded Princess, his unapproachable one, came over him with a fresh wave of horror and he groaned aloud.

In the kitchen sat the Shuttleworth kitchenmaid, a most accomplished young person, listening to the groans and wondering what next.  Tussie had sent her, with fearful threats of what sort of character she would get if she refused to go.  She had at once given notice, but had been forced all the same to go, being driven over in a dog-cart in the early morning rain by a groom who made laboured pleasantries at her expense.  She could cook very well, almost as well as that great personage the Shuttleworth cook, but she could only cook if there were things to be cooked; and what she found at Creeper Cottage was the rest of the ginger biscuits and sardines.  Well, I will not linger over that.  Priscilla did get breakfast somehow, the girl, after trying vainly to strike sparks of helpfulness out of Annalise, going to the store and ordering what was necessary.  Then she washed up, while Annalise tripped in and out for the express purpose, so it seemed, of turning up her nose; then she sat and waited and wondered what next.  For a long time she supposed somebody would send for her to come and talk about luncheon; but nobody did.  She heard the ceaseless stridings in the next room, and every now and then the groans.  The rain on the kitchen window did not patter more ceaselessly than the footsteps strode up and down, and the groans got very much on to the girl’s nerves.  At last she decided that no person who was groaning like that would ever want to order luncheon, and she had better go to the young lady.  She went out accordingly and knocked at Priscilla’s door.  Priscilla was in her chair by the fire, lost in troublous thought.  She looked vaguely at the kitchenmaid for a moment, and then asked her to go away.  “I’m busy,” explained Priscilla, whose hands were folded in her lap.