"Women are always foolish. They cannot hold their tongues
or think clearly. Return to Berlin at once. You are not of those
whose conduct I can commend to be trusted in the future."
He was gone before she could have spoken even if she had dared.
Sobbing gasps caught her breath as she stood and watched him
striding pitilessly and superbly away with, what seemed to her
abject soul, the swing and tread of a martial god. Her streaming
tears tasted salt indeed. She might never see him again--even from
a distance. She would be disgraced and flung aside as a blundering
woman. She had obeyed his every word and done her straining best,
as she had licked the dust at his feet--but he would never cast a
glance at her in the future or utter to her the remotest word of
his high commands. She so reeled as she went her wretched way that
a good-natured policeman said to her as he passed,
"Steady on, my girl. Best get home and go to bed."
To Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, it was stated by Coombe that Fraulein
Hirsch had been called back to Germany by family complications.
That august orders should recall Count Von Hillern, was easily
understood. Such magnificent persons never shone upon society for
any length of time.
That Feather had been making a country home visit when her daughter
had faced tragedy was considered by Lord Coombe as a fortunate
thing.
"We will not alarm Mrs.
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