We stopped at a distance of half-a-dozen paces to allow her time for recollection.  She eyed us softly in a fixed manner, while the sea-wind blew her thick redbrown hair to threads on her cheek.  Colour on the fair skin told us we were recognized.

‘Princess Ottilia!’ said my father.

‘It is I, my friend,’ she answered.  ‘And you?’

‘With more health than I am in need of, dearest princess.’

‘And he?’

’Harry Richmond! my son, now of age, commencing his tour; and he has not forgotten the farewell bunch of violets.’

Her eyelids gently lifted, asking me.

‘Nor the mount you did me the honour to give me on the little Hungarian,’ said I.

‘How nice this sea-air is!’ she spoke in English.  ’England and sea go together in my thoughts.  And you are here!  I have been down very low, near the lowest.  But your good old sea makes me breathe again.  I want to toss on it.  Have you yet seen the Markgrafin?’

My father explained that we had just landed from the boat.

‘Is our meeting, then, an accident?’

‘Dear princess, I heard of your being out by the shore.’

’Ah! kind:  and you walked to meet me?  I love that as well, though I love chance.  And it is chance that brings you here!  I looked out on the boat from England while they were dressing me:  I cannot have too much of the morning, for then I have all to myself:  sea and sky and I. The night people are all asleep, and you come like an old Marchen.’

Her eyelids dropped without closing.

‘Speak no more to her just at present,’ said an English voice, Miss Silbey’s.  Schwartz, the huge dragoon, whose big black horse hung near him in my memory like a phantom, pulled the chair at a quiet pace, head downward.  A young girl clad in plain black walked beside Miss Sibley, following the wheels.

‘Danger is over,’ Miss Sibley answered my gaze.  ’She is convalescent.  You see how weak she is.’

I praised the lady for what I deemed her great merit in not having quitted the service of the princess.

‘Oh!’ said she, ’my adieux to Sarkeld were uttered years ago.  But when I heard of her fall from the horse I went and nursed her.  We were once in dread of her leaving us.  She sank as if she had taken some internal injury.  It may have been only the shock to her system and the cessation of her accustomed exercise.  She has a little over-studied.’

‘The margravine?’

’The margravine is really very good and affectionate, and has won my esteem.  So you and your father are united at last?  We have often talked of you.  Oh! that day up by the tower.  But, do you know, the statue is positively there now, and no one—­no one who had the privilege of beholding the first bronze Albrecht Wohlgemuth, Furst von Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld, no one will admit that the second is half worthy of him.  I can feel to this day the leap of the heart in my mouth when the statue dismounted.  The prince sulked for a month:  the margravine still longer at your father’s evasion.  She could not make allowance for the impulsive man:  such a father; such a son!’