The evening sun,
shining through the small, deeply embrasured windows, fell on a face at
no time joyous, now tired and worn. He sat down at his broad
writing-table, and looked round the room with a little blink of the
eyelids.
"I am getting too old for this sort of thing," he said.
His gaze lighted on the heavy riding-whip thrown on the ground near the
door where he had released Claude de Chauxville, after the terrible
punishment meted out to that foe with heavy Teutonic hand. Steinmetz
rose, and picking up the whip with the grunt of a stout man stooping,
replaced it carefully in the rack over the mantelpiece.
He stood looking out of the window for a few moments.
"It will have to be done," he said resolutely, and rang the bell.
"My compliments to the prince," he said to his servant, who appeared
instantly, "and will he come to me here."
When Paul came into the room a few minutes later Steinmetz was standing
by the fire. He turned and looked gravely at the prince.
"I have just kicked De Chauxville out of the house," he said.
The color left Paul's face quite suddenly.
"Why?" he asked, with hard eyes. He had begun to distrust Etta, and
there is nothing so hard to stop as the growth of distrust.
Steinmetz did not answer at once.
"Was it not _my_ privilege?" asked Paul, with a grim smile.
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