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"In truth," he said, "the Signora Baronessa's lessons consisted chiefly " "In teaching me pronunciation," interrupted the baroness, trying to remove Hedwig's veil and hat, somewhat against the girl's inclination. "Yes, you see how it is. I know a little of singing, but I cannot pronounce not in the least. Ah, these Italian vowels will be the death of me!
But although Hedwig's fingers twined lovingly with his, and she often turned and looked at him from beneath her hanging veil, she was silent for a long time. Nino respected her mood, half guessing what she felt, and no sound was heard save an occasional grunt from the countryman as he urged the beasts, and the regular clatter of the hoofs on the stony road.
And she reflected, not unwisely, that if things were really as bad as they appeared, to isolate herself, helpless in the mountains, would be but to play into the enemy's hand. "To return to the matter of Hedwig's marriage," said the King. "Marriage! When our very lives are threatened!" "I would be greatly honored," said the King, "if I might be permitted to finish what I was saying."
To offset violence and anarchy itself, only that one small figure on the balcony! Late in the afternoon the King sent for Prince Ferdinand William Otto. He had not left his bed since the day he had placed the matter of Hedwig's marriage before the Council, and now he knew he would never leave it.
As he turned, the baroness laid her hand on Hedwig's affectionately, as though sympathising with something she supposed to be passing in the girl's mind. But Hedwig was passive, unless a little shudder at the first touch of the baroness's fingers might pass for a manifestation of feeling.
"I will avoid him," said Tell. "He will not seek me." "Well, mind you do," was Hedwig's reply. On another occasion, when the Governor's soldiers were chasing a friend of his, called Baumgarten, and when Baumgarten's only chance of escape was to cross the lake during a fierce storm, and when the ferryman, sensibly remarking, "What! must I rush into the jaws of death?
Catching Hedwig's eye, he ran his fingers up through his thick yellow hair and grinned. Hedwig blushed. She had confided to him once, while they were walking in the garden at the summer palace, that, she was thinking of being in love with a young lieutenant who was attached to the King's suite.
Hedwig's teeth chattered so that the other looked hard at her till she faltered the explanation: "Your way of saying things, madame, gives me cold shivers up and down the back ugh! Why, that gentleman was over head and ears in love with you!" "That is why he probably went under so quickly, and could not keep his head above water!" "I thought you liked him a goodish bit " "I oh!"
Nevertheless, they urged the beasts onward hotly, if one may use the word of the long, heavy trot of a mountain mule. The sturdy countryman never paused or gasped for breath, keeping pace in a steady, determined fashion. But they need not have been disturbed, for Hedwig's guess was nearer the truth than Nino's reasoning.
When he entered the room at the back of the shop, where Minna was sewing, and where Herr Sohnstein, with his arm comfortably around Aunt Hedwig's waist, was smoking his long pipe, he created a stir of genuine alarm. As Aunt Hedwig very truly said, he looked as though he had seen a ghost.
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