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For she had known his every move since the train drew out of Dreiberg. "Father, here is our friend, Herr Carmichael." "Carmichael?" said Herbeck slowly.. "Ah, yes. Good morning." And Carmichael instantly comprehended that his name recalled nothing to the other man's remembrance. "You are returning to America?" she asked. "For good, perhaps.
Her father was slowly improving, but with this improvement came the natural desire for seclusion; so he came on deck only at night. The night on which the vessel bore into the moist, warm air of the Gulf Stream was full of moonshine, of smooth, phosphorescent billows. Herbeck had gone below. The girl leaned over the rail, alone and lonely.
But these remittances, argued Herbeck, came long after the death of the old king. He had his agents, vowed the duke. Herbeck would not listen to this. He preferred to believe that Count von Arnsberg was the man. There was an endless tangle of red tape before the girl became secure in her rights.
The little finger of his right hand was badly scarred, the mutilation of a fencing-bout in his student days. "What do you advise?" wearily. It seemed to the duke that Herbeck of late never agreed with him. "My advice is to wait. If they remain mute, then the case is serious, and you will have them on the hip.
As the first was truthful, there is no reason to believe this one to be false." Herbeck read, and he was genuinely startled. "What do you say to that?" triumphantly. "This," with that rapid decision which made him the really great tactician he was. "Let them go quietly back to Jugendheit." "No!" blazed the duke. "Are we rich enough for war?" "Always questions, questions!
Revenge, the clamor of revenge, was all the voice he heard. The chancellor bowed, turned to leave the room, when Hildegarde flew to the duke's side and snatched at his sleeve. "Father, you are mad!" "At least I am master in Ehrenstein. Herbeck, you will have the kindness to summon General Ducwitz." "Your Highness," replied Herbeck, "I have worked long and faithfully in your service.
His face was as livid as the scar on his head. Herbeck dropped his quill, and there was a dream in his eyes. His desk was littered with papers, well covered with ink; flowing sentences, and innumerable figures. He was the watch-dog of the duchy. Never a bill from the Reichstag that did not pass under his cold eye before it went to the duke for his signature, his approval, or veto.
"Heaven did not write it," she replied. "No, my daughter," said the duke. "Man is at the bottom of all the kinks and twists in this short life; not Heaven. But Herbeck is right; you shall marry when you will." She sprang into his arms and kissed him. It was, however, a traitorous kiss; for she was saying in her heart that now she would never marry.
He was frank in his likes and dislikes, he hated secrets, and he loved an opponent who engaged him in the open. Herbeck often labored with him over this open manner, but the mind he sought to work upon was as receptive to political hypocrisy as a wall of granite. It was this extraordinary rectitude which made the duke so powerful an aid to Bismarck in the days that followed.
"You are always right, Herbeck. This plan could not have been devised better or more to my satisfaction." The duke laughed. "You are right. Ah, here is the chief." Herbeck read the letter in part to the chief, who jotted down the words, repeating aloud in a kind of mutter: "A mountaineer, a vintner, a carter, a butcher, and a baker. You will give me their descriptions, your Excellency?"
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