“Why, ma’am, she refused, unless I did, to prepare your Grand Ducal Highness’s tea.”

“Oh Fritzi!” Priscilla looked up at him, shaking her head and smiling through all her troubles.  Was ever so much love and so much folly united in one wise old man?  Was ever, for that matter, so expensive a tea?

“I admit I permitted the immediate, the passing, moment to blot out the future from my clearer vision on that occasion.”

“On that occasion?  Oh Fritzi.  What about all the other occasions?  When you gave me all I asked for—­for the poor people, for my party.  You must have suffered tortures of anxiety.  And all by yourself.  Oh Fritzi.  It was dear of you—­perfectly, wonderfully, dear.  But you ought to have been different with me from the beginning—­treated me exactly as you would have treated a real niece—­”

“Ma’am,” cried Fritzing, jumping up, “this is waste of time.  Our case is very urgent.  Money must be obtained.  You must allow me to judge in this matter, however ill I have acquitted myself up to now.  I shall start at once for Symford Hall and obtain a loan of Augustus.”

Priscilla pushed back her chair and got up too.  “My dear Fritzi, please leave that unfortunate young man out of the question,” she said, flushing.  “How can you worry a person who is ill in bed with such things?”

“His mother is not ill in bed and will do quite as well.  I am certainly going.”

“You are not going.  I won’t have you ask his mother.  I—­forbid you to do anything of the sort.  Oh Fritzi,” she added in despair, for he had picked up the hat and stick he had flung down on coming in and was evidently not going to take the least notice of her commands—­“oh Fritzi, you can’t ask Tussie for money.  It would kill him to know we were in difficulties.”

“Kill him, ma’am?  Why should it kill him?” shouted Fritzing, exasperated by such a picture of softness.

“It wouldn’t only kill him—­it would be simply too dreadful besides,” said Priscilla, greatly distressed.  “Why, he asked me this afternoon—­wasn’t going to tell you, but you force me to—­he asked me this very afternoon to marry him, and the dreadful part is that I’m afraid he thinks—­he hopes—­that I’m going to.”

XX

The only inhabitant of Creeper Cottage who slept that night was Annalise.  Priscilla spent it walking up and down her bedroom, and Fritzing on the other side of the wall spent it walking up and down his.  They could hear each other doing it; it was a melancholy sound.  Once Priscilla was seized with laughter—­a not very genial mirth, but still laughter—­and had to fling herself on her bed and bury her face in the pillows lest Fritzing should hear so blood-curdling a noise.  It was when their steps had fallen steadily together for several turns and the church clock, just as she was noticing this, had struck three.  Not for this, to tramp up and down their rooms all night,