“If,” went on Fritzing after an anxious pause, “I was sharp with you just now—­and I fear I may have been hasty—­you should not take it amiss from one who, like Brutus, is sick of many griefs.  Come down, Fraeulein, and let me make amends.”

The Princess’s bell rang.  At once habit impelled Annalise to that which Fritzing’s pleadings would never have effected; she scrambled down the ladder, and leaving him still under her window presented herself before her mistress with her usual face of meek respect.

“I said tea,” said Priscilla very distinctly, looking at her with slightly lifted eyebrows.

Annalise curtseyed and disappeared.

“How fearfully polite German maids are,” remarked Tussie.

“In what way?” asked Priscilla.

“Those curtseys.  They’re magnificent.”

“Don’t English maids curtsey?”

“None that I’ve ever seen.  Perhaps they do to royalties.”

“Oh?” said Priscilla with a little jump.  She was still so much unnerved by the unexpected meeting with her father on the wall of Creeper Cottage that she could not prevent the little jump.

“What would German maids do, I wonder, in dealing with royalties,” said Tussie, “if they curtsey so beautifully to ordinary mistresses?  They’d have to go down on their knees to a princess, wouldn’t they?”

“How should I know?” said Priscilla, irritably, alarmed to feel she was turning red; and with great determination she began to talk literature.

Fritzing was lying in wait for Annalise, and caught her as she came into the bathroom.

“Fraeulein,” said the miserable man trying to screw his face into persuasiveness, “you cannot let the Princess go without tea.”

“Yes I can,” said Annalise.

He thrust his hands into his pockets to keep them off her shoulders.

“Make it this once, Fraeulein, and I will hire a woman of the village to make it in future.  And see, you must not leave the Princess’s service, a service of such great honour to yourself, because I chanced to be perhaps a little—­hasty.  I will give you two hundred marks to console you for the slight though undoubted difference in the mode of living, and I will, as I said, hire a woman to come each day and cook.  Will it not be well so?”

“No,” said Annalise.

“No?”

Annalise put her hands on her hips, and swaying lightly from side to side began to sing softly.  Fritzing gazed at this fresh development in her manners in silent astonishment. “Jedermann macht mir die Cour, c’est l’amour, c’est l’amour,” sang Annalise, her head one side, her eyes on the ceiling.

“Liebes Kind, are your promises of no value?  Did you not promise to keep your mouth shut, and not betray the Princess’s confidence?  Did she not seek you out from all the others for the honour of keeping her secrets?  And you will, after one week, divulge them to a stranger?  You will leave her service?  You will return to Kunitz?  Is it well so?”