Chapter
9
COUNT MAXIMILIAN LOMSK WAS IN EXILE. HE HAD BEEN IN exile for a year, ever since the night that King Otto had found him and Ferdinand and Hilda and the cobbler's pretty daughter in the hunting lodge. At present he was in Switzerland and without a great deal of money, for the count's father was rich only in blue blood and the amount of his debts. He was stopping at a cheap little hotel from which he had written many letters to Ferdinand begging him to intercede with his royal father to the end that Count Lomsk might return home; but Ferdinand never got the letters-Otto saw to that. Max guessed as much; so he had always written carefully to Ferdinand and spoken highly of the King, his father. His letters were really written quite as much for Otto as they were for Ferdinand; and b
