PART III.

[pg 125]PART III.CHAPTER I.The Baron and Mr Bunker walked arm-in-arm along the esplanade at St Egbert’s-on-Sea.“Aha!”said the Baron,“zis is more fresh zan London!”“Yes,”replied his friend;“we are now in the presence of that stimulating element which provides patriotic Britons with music-hall songs, and dyspeptic Britons with an appetite.”A stirring breeze swept down the long white esplanade, threatening hats and troubling skirts; the pale-green south-coast sea rumbled up the shingle; the day was bright and pleasant for the time of year, and drove the Baron’s mischances from his head; altogether it seemed to Mr Bunker that the omens were good. They were both dressed in the smartest of tweed suits, and walked jauntily, like men who knew their own value. Every now and then, as they passed a pretty face, the Baron would say,“Aha, Bonker! zat is not so bad, eh?”And Mr Bunker, who seemed not unwilling that his friend should find some entertaining distraction in St Egbert’s, would look at the owners of these faces with a prospector’s eye and his own unrivalled assurance.[pg 126]They had walked up and down three or four times, when a desire for a different species of diversion began to overtake the Baron. It was the one kind of desire that the Baron never even tried to wrestle with.“My vriend Bonker,”said he,“is it not somevere about time for loncheon, eh?”“I should say it was precisely the hour.”“Ha, ha! zen, let us gom and eat. Himmel, zis sea is ze fellow to make von hungry!”The Baron had taken a private suite of rooms on the first floor of the best hotel in St Egbert’s, and after a very substantial lunch Mr Bunker stretched himself on the luxurious sitting-room sofa and announced his intention of having a nap.“I shall go out,”said the Baron.“You vill not gom?”“I shall leave you to make a single-handed conquest,”replied Mr Bunker.“Besides, I have a little matter I want to look into.”So the Baron arranged his hat airily, at what he had perceived to be the most fashionable and effective English angle, and strutted off to the esplanade.It was about two hours later that he burst excitedly into the room, crying,“Aha, mine Bonker! I haf disgovered zomzing!”and then he stopped in some surprise.“Ello, vat make you, my vriend?”His friend, in fact, seemed to be somewhat singularly employed. Through a dense cloud of tobacco-smoke you could just pick him out of the depths of an armchair, his feet resting on the mantelpiece, while his lap and all the floor round about were covered with immense books.[pg 127]The Baron’s curiosity was still further excited by observing that they consisted principally of a London and a St Egbert’s directory, several volumes of a Dictionary of National Biography, and one or two peerages and county family compilations.He looked up with a smile.“You may well wonder, my dear Baron. The fact is, I am looking for a name.”“A name! vat name?”“Alas! if I knew what it was I should stop looking, and I confess I’m rather sick of the job.”“Vich vay do you look, zen?”“Simply by wading my way through all the lists of names I could steal or borrow. It’s devilish dry work.”“Ze name of a vriend, is it?”“Yes; but I’m afraid I must wait till it comes. And what is this discovery, Baron? A petticoat, I presume. After all, they are the only things worth finding,”and he shut the books one after another.“A petticoat with ze fairest girl inside it!”exclaimed the Baron, rapturously.“Your eyes seem to have been singularly penetrating, Baron. Was she dark or fair, tall or short, fat or slender, widow, wife, or maid?”“Fair, viz blue eyes, short pairhaps but not too short, slender as a—a—drom-stick, and I vould say a maid; at least I see vun stout old lady mit her, mozzer and daughter I soppose.”“And did this piece of perfection seem to appreciate you?”“Vy should I know? Zey are ze real ladies and pairtend[pg 128]not to see me, bot I zink zey notice me all ze same. Not‘lady vriends,’Bonker, ha, ha, ha!”Mr Bunker laughed with reminiscent amusement, and inquired,“And how did the romance end—in a cab, Baron?”“Ha, ha, ha!”laughed the Baron;“better zan zat, Bonker—moch better!”Mr Bunker raised his eyebrows.“It’s hardly the time of year for a romance to end in a bathing-machine. You followed the divinity to her rented heaven, perhaps?”The Baron bent forward and answered in a stage whisper,“Zey live in zis hotel, Bonker!”“Then I can only wish you joy, Baron, and if my funds allow me, send her a wedding present.”“Ach, not quite so fast, my vriend! I am not caught so easy.”“My dear fellow, a week at close quarters is sufficient to net any man.”“Ven I marry,”replied the Baron,“moch most be considered. A von Blitzenberg does not mate viz every vun.”“A good many families have made the same remark, but one does not always meet the fathers-in-law.”“Ha, ha! ve shall see. Bot, Bonker, she is lofly!”The Baron awaited dinner with even more than his usual ardour. He dressed with the greatest care, and at an absurdly early hour was already urging his friend to come down and take their places. Indeed after a time there was no withholding him, and they finally took their seats in the dining-room before anybody else.[pg 129]At what seemed to the impatient Baron unconscionably long intervals a few people dropped in and began to study their menus and glance with an air of uncomfortable suspicion at their neighbours.“I vonder vill she gom,”he said three or four times at least.“Console yourself, my dear Baron,”his friend would reply;“they always come. That’s seldom the difficulty.”And the Baron would dally with his victuals in the most unwonted fashion, and growl at the rapidity with which the courses followed one another.“Do zey suppose ve vish to eat like——?”he began, and then laying his hand on his friend’s sleeve, he whispered,“She goms!”Mr Bunker turned his head just in time to see in the doorway the Countess of Grillyer and the Lady Alicia à Fyre.“Is she not fair?”asked the Baron, excitedly.“I entirely approve of your taste, Baron. I have only once seen any one quite like her before.”With a gratified smile the Baron filled his glass, while his friend seemed amused by some humorous reflection of his own.The Lady Alicia and her mother had taken their seats at a table a little way off, and at first their eyes never happened to turn in the direction of the two friends. But at last, after looking at the ceiling, the carpet, the walls, the other people, everything else in the room it seemed, Lady Alicia’s glance fell for an instant on the Baron. That nobleman looked as interesting as a[pg 130]mouthful of roast duck would permit him, but the glance passed serenely on to Mr Bunker. For a moment it remained serene; suddenly it became startled and puzzled, and at that instant Mr Bunker turned his own eyes full upon her, smiled slightly, and raised his glass to his lips.The glance fell, and the Lady Alicia blushed down to the diamonds in her necklace.The Baron insisted on lingering over his dinner till the charmer was finished, and so by a fortuitous coincidence they left the room immediately behind the Countess. The Baron passed them in the passage, and a few yards farther he looked round for his friend, and the Countess turned to look for her daughter.They saw Lady Alicia following with an intensely unconscious expression, while Mr Bunker was in the act of returning to the dining-room.“I wanted to secure a table for breakfast,”he explained.CHAPTER II.The Baron was in high hopes of seeing the fair unknown at breakfast, but it seemed she must be either breakfasting in her own room or lying long abed.“I think I shall go out for a little constitutional,”said Mr Bunker, when he had finished.“I suppose the hotel has a stronger attraction for you.”“Ach, yes, I shall remain,”his friend replied.“Pairhaps I may see zem.”[pg 131]“Take care then, Baron!”“I shall not propose till you return, Bonker!”“No,”said Mr Bunker to himself,“I don’t think you will.”Just outside St Egbert’s there is a high breezy sweep of downs, falling suddenly to a chalky seaward cliff. It overlooks the town and the undulating inland country and a great spread of shining sea; and even without a spy-glass you can see sail after sail and smoke-wreath after smoke-wreath go by all day long.But Mr Bunker had apparently walked there for other reasons than to see the view. He did stop once or twice, but it was only to scan the downs ahead, and at the sight of a fluttering skirt he showed no interest in anything else, but made a straight line for its owner. For her part, the lady seemed to await his coming. She gathered her countenance into an expression of as perfect unconcern as a little heightening of her colour would allow her, and returned his salute with rather a distant bow. But Mr Bunker was not to be damped by this hint of barbed wire. He held out his hand and exclaimed cordially,“My dear Lady Alicia! this is charming of you!”“Of course you understand, Mr Beveridge, it’s only——”“Perfectly,”he interrupted, gaily;“I understand everything I should and nothing I shouldn’t. In fact, I have altered little, except in the trifling matter of a beard, a moustache or two, and, by the way, a name.”“A name?”“I am now Francis Bunker, but as much at your service as ever.”[pg 132]“But why—I mean, have you really changed your name?”“Circumstances have changed it, just as circumstances shaved me.”Lady Alicia made a great endeavour to look haughty.“I do not quite understand, Mr——”“Bunker—a temporary title, but suggestive, and simple for the tradesmen.”“I do not understand your conduct. Why have you changed your name?”“Why not?”This retort was so evidently unanswerable that Lady Alicia changed her inquiry.“Where have you been?”“Till yesterday, in London.”“Then you didn’t go to your own parish?”she demanded, reproachfully.“There were difficulties,”he replied;“in fact, a certified lunatic is not in great demand as a parish priest. They seem to prefer them uncertified.”“But didn’t you try?”“Hard, but it was no use. The bishop was out of town, and I had to wait till his return; besides, my position was somewhat insecure. I have had at least two remarkable escapes since I saw you last.”“Are you safe here?”she asked, hurriedly.“With your consent, yes.”She looked a little troubled.“I don’t know that I am doing right, Mr Bev—Bunker, but——”“Thank you, my friend,”he interrupted, tenderly.[pg 133]“Don’t,”she began, hastily.“You mustn’t talk like——”“Francis Beveridge?”he interrupted.“The trouble is, this rascal Bunker bears an unconscionably awkward resemblance to our old friend.”“You must see that it is quite—ridiculous.”“Absurd,”he agreed,—“perfectly preposterous. I laugh whenever I think of it!”Poor Lady Alicia felt like a man at a telephone who has been connected with the wrong person. Again she made a desperate shift to fall back on a becoming pride.“What do you mean?”she demanded.“If I mean anything at all, which is always rather doubtful,”he replied, candidly,“I mean that Beveridge and his humbug were creatures of an occasion, just as Bunker and his are of another. The one occasion is passed, and with it the first entertaining gentleman has vanished into space. The second gentleman will doubtless follow when his time is up. In fact, I may be said to be a series of dissolving views.”“Then isn’t what you said true?”“I’m afraid you must be more specific; you see I’ve talked so much.”“What you said about yourself—and your work.”He shook his head humorously.“I have no means of checking my statements.”She looked at him in a troubled way, and then her eyes fell.“At least,”she said,“you won’t—you mustn’t treat me as—as you did.”[pg 134]“As Beveridge did? Certainly not; Bunker is the soul of circumspection. Besides, he doesn’t require to get out of an asylum.”“Then it was only to get away?”she cried, turning scarlet.“Let us call it so,”he replied, looking pensively out to sea.It seemed wiser to Lady Alicia to change the subject.“Who is the friend you are staying with?”she asked, suddenly.“My old friend the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, and your own most recent admirer,”he replied.“I am at present living with, in fact I may say upon, him.”“Does he know?”“If you meet him, you had perhaps better not inquire into my past history.”“I meant, does he know about—about your knowing me?”“Bless them!”thought Mr Bunker;“one forgets they’re notalwaysthinking about us!”“My noble friend has no idea that I have been so fortunate,”he replied.Lady Alicia looked relieved.“Who is he?”she asked.“A German nobleman of great wealth, long descent, and the most accommodating disposition. He is at present exploring England under my guidance, and I flatter myself that he has already seen and done a number of things that are not on most programmes.”Lady Alicia was silent for a minute. Then she said[pg 135]with a little hesitation,“Didn’t you get a letter from me?”“A letter? No,”he replied, in some surprise.“I wrote twice—because you asked me to, and I thought—I wondered if you were safe.”“To what address did you write?”“The address you gave me.”“And what was that?”he asked, still evidently puzzled.“You said care of the Archbishop of York would find you.”Mr Bunker abruptly looked the other way.“By Jove!”he said, as if lost in speculation,“I must find out what the matter was. I can’t imagine why they haven’t been forwarded.”Lady Alicia appeared a little dissatisfied.“Was that arealaddress?”she asked, suddenly.“Perfectly,”he replied;“as real as Pentonville Jail or the House of Commons.”(“And as likely to find me,”he added to himself.)Lady Alicia seemed to hesitate whether to pursue the subject further, but in the middle of her debate Mr Bunker asked,“By the way, has Lady Grillyer any recollection of having seen me before?”“No, she doesn’t remember you at all.”“Then we shall meet as strangers?”“Yes, I think it would be better; don’t you?”“It will save our imaginations certainly.”Lady Alicia looked at him as though she expected something more; but as nothing came, she said,“I think it’s time I went back.”[pg 136]“For the present thenau revoir, my dear Alicia. I beg your pardon, Lady Alicia; it was that rascal Beveridge who made the slip. It now remains to make your formal acquaintance.”“You—you mustn’t try!”“The deuce is in these people beginning with B!”he laughed.“They seem to do things without trying.”He pressed her hand, raised his hat, and started back to the town. She, on her part, lingered to let him get a clear start of her, and her blue eyes looked as though a breeze had blown across and ruffled them.Mr Bunker had reached the esplanade, and was sauntering easily back towards the hotel, looking at the people and smiling now and then to himself, when he observed with considerable astonishment two familiar figures strolling towards him. They were none other than the Baron and the Countess, engaged in animated conversation, and apparently on the very best terms with each other. At the sight of him the Baron beamed joyfully.“Aha, Bonker, so you haf returned!”he cried.“In ze meanvile I haf had vun great good fortune. Let me present my friend Mr Bonker, ze Lady Grillyer.”The Countess bowed most graciously, and raising a pair of tortoise-shell-rimmed eye-glasses mounted on a stem of the same material, looked at Mr Bunker through these with a by no means disapproving glance.At first sight it was evident that Lady Alicia must“take after”her noble father. The Countess was aquiline of nose, large of person, and emphatic in her voice and manner.[pg 137]“You are the‘showman,’Mr Bunker, are you not?”she said, with a smile for which many of her acquaintances would have given a tolerable percentage of their incomes.“It seems,”replied Mr Bunker, smiling back agreeably,“that the Baron is now the showman, and I must congratulate him on his first venture.”For an instant the Countess seemed a trifle taken aback. It was a considerable number of years since she had been addressed in precisely this strain, and in fact at no time had her admirers ventured quite so dashingly to the attack. But there was something entirely irresistible in Mr Bunker’s manner, partly perhaps because he never made the mistake of heeding a first rebuff. The Countess coughed, then smiled a little again, and said to the Baron,“You didn’t tell me that your showman supplied the little speeches as well.”“I could not know it; zere has not before been ze reason for a pretty speech,”responded the Baron, gallantly.If Lady Grillyer had been anybody else, one would have said that she actually giggled. Certainly a little wave of scandalised satisfaction rippled all over her.“Oh, really!”she cried,“I don’t know which of you is the worst offender.”All this time, as may be imagined, Mr Bunker had been in a state of high mystification at his friend’s unusual adroitness.“How the deuce did he get hold of her?”he said to himself.In the next pause the Baron solved the riddle.[pg 138]“You vil vunder, Bonker,”he said,“how I did gom to know ze Lady Grillyer.”“I envied, certainly,”replied his friend, with a side glance at the now purring Countess.“She vas of my introdogtions, bot till after you vent out zis morning I did not lairn her name. Zen I said to myself,‘Ze sun shines, Himmel is kind! Here now is ze fair Lady Grillyer—my introdogtion!’and zo zat is how, you see.”“To think of the Baron being here and our only finding each other out by chance!”said the Countess.“By a fortunate providence for me!”exclaimed the Baron, fervently.“Baron,”said the Countess, trying hard to look severe,“you must really keep some of these nice speeches for my daughter. Which reminds me, I wonder where she can be?”“Ach, here she goms!”cried the Baron.“Why, how did you know her?”asked the Countess.“I—I did see her last night at dinnair,”explained the Baron, turning red.“Ah, of course, I remember,”replied the Countess, in a matter-of-fact tone; but her motherly eye was sharp, and already it began to look on the highly eligible Rudolph with more approval than ever.“My daughter Alicia, the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, Mr Bunker,”she said the next moment.The Baron went nearly double as he bowed, and the flourish of his hat stirred the dust on the esplanade. Mr Bunker’s salutation was less profound, but his face expressed[pg 139]an almost equal degree of interested respect. Her mother thought that when one of the gentlemen was a nobleman with an indefinite number of thousands a-year and the other a person of so much discrimination, Lady Alicia’s own bow might have been a trifle less reserved. But then even the most astute mother cannot know the reasons for everything.CHAPTER III.“Alicia,”said the Countess,“it was really a most fortunate coincidence our meeting the Baron at St Egbert’s.”She paused for a reply and looked expectantly at her daughter. It was not the first time in the course of the morning that Lady Alicia had listened to similar observations, and perhaps that was why she answered somewhat listlessly,“Yes, wasn’t it?”The Countess frowned, and continued with emphasis,“I consider him one of the most agreeable and best informed young men I have ever met.”“Is he?”said Lady Alicia, absently.“I wonder, Alicia, you hadn’t noticed it,”her mother observed, severely;“you talked with him most of the afternoon. I should have thought that no observant, well-bred girl would have failed to have been struck with his air and conversation.”“I—I thought him very pleasant, mamma.”[pg 140]“I am glad you had so much sense. He isextremelypleasant.”As Lady Alicia made no reply, the Countess felt obliged to continue his list of virtues herself.“He is of most excellent family, Alicia, one of the oldest in Bavaria. I don’t remember what I heard his income was in pfennigs, or whatever they measure money by in Germany, but I know that it is more than £20,000 a-year in English money. A very large sum nowadays,”she added, as if £20,000 had grown since she was a girl.“Yes, mamma.”“He is considered, besides, an unusually promising and intelligent young nobleman, and in Germany, where noblemen are still constantly used, that says a great deal for him.”“Does it, mamma?”“Certainly it does. Education there is so severe that young Englishmen are beginning to know less than they ever did, and in most cases that isn’t saying much. Compare the Baron with the young men you meet here!”She looked at her daughter triumphantly, and Alicia could only reply,“Yes, mamma?”“Compare them and see the difference. Look at the Baron’s friend, Mr Bunker, who is a very agreeable and amusing man, I admit, but look at the difference!”“What is it?”Alicia could not help asking.“Whatis it, Alicia! It is—ah—it’s—er—it is, in short, the effect of a carefully cultivated mind and good blood.”[pg 141]“But don’t you think Mr Bunker cultivated, mamma—and—and—well-bred?”“He has an amusing way of saying things,—but then you must remember that the Baron is doubtless equally entertaining in his native language,—and possibly a superficial knowledge of a few of the leading questions of the day; but the Baron talked to me for half an hour on the relations of something or other in Germany to—er—something else—a very important point, I assure you.”“I always thought him very clever,”said Lady Alicia with a touch of warmth, and then instantly changed colour at the horrible slip.“You always,”said the Countess in alarmed astonishment;“you hardly spoke to him yesterday, and—had you met him before?”“I—I meant the Baron, mamma.”“But I have just been saying that he wasunusuallyclever.”“But I thought, I mean it seemed as though you considered him only well informed.”Lady Alicia’s blushes and confusion deepened. Her mother looked at her with a softening eye. Suddenly she rose, kissed her affectionately, and said with the tenderness of triumph,“Mydeargirl! Of course he is; clever, well informed, and a mostdesirableyoung man. My Alicia could not do——”She stopped, as if she thought this was perhaps a little premature (though the Countess’s methods inclined to the summary and decisive), and again kissing her daughter[pg 142]affectionately, remarked gaily,“Let me see, why, it’s almost time we went for our little walk! We mustn’t really disappoint those young men. I am in the middle of such an amusing discussion with Mr Bunker, who is really a very sensible man and quite worthy of the Baron’s judgment.”Poor Lady Alicia hardly knew whether to feel more relieved at her escape or dismayed at the construction put upon her explanation. She went out to meet the Baron, determined to give no further colour to her mother’s unlucky misconception. The Countess was far too experienced and determined a general to leave it at all doubtful who should walk by whose side, and who should have the opportunity of appreciating whose merits, but Lady Alicia was quite resolved that the Baron’s blandishments should fall on stony ground.But a soft heart and an undecided mouth are treacherous companions. The Baron was so amiable and so gallant, that at the end of half an hour she was obliged to abate the strictness of her resolution. She should treat him with the friendliness of a brother. She learned that he had no sisters: her decision was confirmed.The enamoured and delighted Baron was in the seventh heaven of happy loquacity. He poured out particulars of his travels, his more recordable adventures, his opinions on various social and political matters, and at last even of the family ghost, the hereditary carpet-beatership, and the glories of Bavaria. And Lady Alicia listened with what he could not doubt was an interest touched with tenderness.[pg 143]“I wonder,”she said, artlessly,“that you find anything to admire in England—compared with Bavaria, I mean.”“Two zings I haf not zere,”replied the Baron, waving his hand round towards the horizon.“Vun is ze vet sheet of flowing sea—says not your poet so? Ze ozzer”(laying his hand on his heart)“is ze Lady Alicia à Fyre.”There are some people who catch sentiment whenever it happens to be in the air, just as others almost equally unfortunate regularly take hay-fever.Lady Alicia’s reply was much softer than she intended, especially as she could have told anybody that the Baron’s compliment was the merest figure of speech.“You needn’t have included me: I’m sureI’mnot a great attraction.”“Ze sea is less, so zat leaves none,”the Baron smiled.“Didn’t you see anybody—I mean, anything in London that attracted you—that you liked?”“Zat I liked, yes, zat pairhaps for the moment attracted me; but not zat shall still attract me ven I am gone avay.”The Baron sighed this time, and she felt impelled to reply, with the most sisterly kindness,“I—we should, of course, like to think that you didn’t forget usaltogether.”“You need not fear.”Then Lady Alicia began to realise that this was more like a second cousin than a brother, and with sudden sprightliness she cried,“I wonder where that steamer’s going!”[pg 144]The Baron turned his eyes towards his first-named attraction, but for a professed lover of the ocean his interest appeared slight. He only replied absently,“Ach, zo?”A little way behind them walked Mr Bunker and the Countess. The attention of Lady Grillyer was divided between the agreeable conversation of her companion and the pleasant spectacle of a fabulous number of pfennigs a-year bending its titled head over her daughter. In the middle of one of Mr Bunker’s most amusing stories she could not forbear interrupting with a complacent“theydomake a very handsome couple!”Mr Bunker politely stopped his narrative, and looked critically from his friend’s gaily checked back to Lady Alicia’s trim figure.“Pray go on with your story, Mr Bunker,”said the Countess, hastily, realising that she had thought a little too loudly.“They are like,”responded Mr Bunker, replying to her first remark—“they are like a pair of gloves.”The Countess raised her brows and looked at him sharply.“I mean, of course, the best quality.”“I think,”said the Countess, suspiciously,“that you spoke a little carelessly.”“My simile was a little premature?”“I think so,”said the Countess, decisively.“Let us call them then an odd pair,”smiled Mr Bunker, unruffled;“and only hope that they’ll turn out to be the same size and different hands.”[pg 145]The Countess actually condescended to smile back.“She is adearchild,”she murmured.“His income, I think, is sufficient,”he answered.Humour was not conspicuous in the Grillyer family. The Countess replied seriously,“I am one of those out-of-date people, Mr Bunker, who consider some things come before money, but the Baron’s birth and position are fortunately unimpeachable.”“While his mental qualities,”said Mr Bunker,“are, in my experience, almost unique.”The Countess was confirmed in her opinion of Mr Bunker’s discrimination.Late that night, after they had parted with their friends, the Baron smoked in the most unwonted silence while Mr Bunker dozed on the sofa. Several times Rudolph threw restive glances at his friend, as if he had something on his mind that he needed a helping hand to unburden himself of. At last the silence grew so intolerable that he screwed up his courage and with desperate resolution exclaimed,“Bonker!”Mr Bunker opened his eyes and sat up.“Bonker, I am in loff!”Mr Bunker smiled and stretched himself out again.“I have also been in love,”he replied.“You are not now?”“Alas! no.”“Vy alas?”“Because follieswithoutillusions get so infernally dull, Baron.”The Baron smiled a little foolishly.[pg 146]“I haf ze illusions, I fear.”Then he broke out enthusiastically,“Ach, bot is she not lofly, Bonker? If she will bot lof me back I shall be ze happiest man out of heaven!”“You have wasted no time, Baron.”The Baron shook his head in melancholy pleasure.“You are quite sure it is really love this time?”his friend pursued.“Qvite!”said the Baron, with the firmness of a martyr.“There are so many imitations.”“Not so close zat zey can deceive!”“Ha, ha, ha!”laughed Mr Bunker.“These first symptoms are common to them all, and yet the varieties of the disease are almost beyond counting. I myself have suffered from it in eight different forms. There was the virulent, spotted-all-over variety, known as calf-love; there was the kind that accompanied itself by a course of the Restoration dramatists; another form I may call the strayed-Platonic, and that may be subdivided into at least two; then there was——”“Schtop! schtop!”cried the Baron.“Ha, ha, ha! Zat will do! Teufel! I most examine my heart strictly. And yet, Bonker, I zink my loff is anozzer kind—zereal!”“They are all that, Baron; but have it your own way. Anything I can do to make you worse shall be done.”“Zanks, my best of friends,”said the Baron, warmly, seizing his hand;“I knew you would stand by me!”Mr Bunker gave a little laugh, and returning the pressure, replied,“My dear fellow, I’d do anything to oblige a friend in such an interesting condition.”

CHAPTER I.The Baron and Mr Bunker walked arm-in-arm along the esplanade at St Egbert’s-on-Sea.“Aha!”said the Baron,“zis is more fresh zan London!”“Yes,”replied his friend;“we are now in the presence of that stimulating element which provides patriotic Britons with music-hall songs, and dyspeptic Britons with an appetite.”A stirring breeze swept down the long white esplanade, threatening hats and troubling skirts; the pale-green south-coast sea rumbled up the shingle; the day was bright and pleasant for the time of year, and drove the Baron’s mischances from his head; altogether it seemed to Mr Bunker that the omens were good. They were both dressed in the smartest of tweed suits, and walked jauntily, like men who knew their own value. Every now and then, as they passed a pretty face, the Baron would say,“Aha, Bonker! zat is not so bad, eh?”And Mr Bunker, who seemed not unwilling that his friend should find some entertaining distraction in St Egbert’s, would look at the owners of these faces with a prospector’s eye and his own unrivalled assurance.[pg 126]They had walked up and down three or four times, when a desire for a different species of diversion began to overtake the Baron. It was the one kind of desire that the Baron never even tried to wrestle with.“My vriend Bonker,”said he,“is it not somevere about time for loncheon, eh?”“I should say it was precisely the hour.”“Ha, ha! zen, let us gom and eat. Himmel, zis sea is ze fellow to make von hungry!”The Baron had taken a private suite of rooms on the first floor of the best hotel in St Egbert’s, and after a very substantial lunch Mr Bunker stretched himself on the luxurious sitting-room sofa and announced his intention of having a nap.“I shall go out,”said the Baron.“You vill not gom?”“I shall leave you to make a single-handed conquest,”replied Mr Bunker.“Besides, I have a little matter I want to look into.”So the Baron arranged his hat airily, at what he had perceived to be the most fashionable and effective English angle, and strutted off to the esplanade.It was about two hours later that he burst excitedly into the room, crying,“Aha, mine Bonker! I haf disgovered zomzing!”and then he stopped in some surprise.“Ello, vat make you, my vriend?”His friend, in fact, seemed to be somewhat singularly employed. Through a dense cloud of tobacco-smoke you could just pick him out of the depths of an armchair, his feet resting on the mantelpiece, while his lap and all the floor round about were covered with immense books.[pg 127]The Baron’s curiosity was still further excited by observing that they consisted principally of a London and a St Egbert’s directory, several volumes of a Dictionary of National Biography, and one or two peerages and county family compilations.He looked up with a smile.“You may well wonder, my dear Baron. The fact is, I am looking for a name.”“A name! vat name?”“Alas! if I knew what it was I should stop looking, and I confess I’m rather sick of the job.”“Vich vay do you look, zen?”“Simply by wading my way through all the lists of names I could steal or borrow. It’s devilish dry work.”“Ze name of a vriend, is it?”“Yes; but I’m afraid I must wait till it comes. And what is this discovery, Baron? A petticoat, I presume. After all, they are the only things worth finding,”and he shut the books one after another.“A petticoat with ze fairest girl inside it!”exclaimed the Baron, rapturously.“Your eyes seem to have been singularly penetrating, Baron. Was she dark or fair, tall or short, fat or slender, widow, wife, or maid?”“Fair, viz blue eyes, short pairhaps but not too short, slender as a—a—drom-stick, and I vould say a maid; at least I see vun stout old lady mit her, mozzer and daughter I soppose.”“And did this piece of perfection seem to appreciate you?”“Vy should I know? Zey are ze real ladies and pairtend[pg 128]not to see me, bot I zink zey notice me all ze same. Not‘lady vriends,’Bonker, ha, ha, ha!”Mr Bunker laughed with reminiscent amusement, and inquired,“And how did the romance end—in a cab, Baron?”“Ha, ha, ha!”laughed the Baron;“better zan zat, Bonker—moch better!”Mr Bunker raised his eyebrows.“It’s hardly the time of year for a romance to end in a bathing-machine. You followed the divinity to her rented heaven, perhaps?”The Baron bent forward and answered in a stage whisper,“Zey live in zis hotel, Bonker!”“Then I can only wish you joy, Baron, and if my funds allow me, send her a wedding present.”“Ach, not quite so fast, my vriend! I am not caught so easy.”“My dear fellow, a week at close quarters is sufficient to net any man.”“Ven I marry,”replied the Baron,“moch most be considered. A von Blitzenberg does not mate viz every vun.”“A good many families have made the same remark, but one does not always meet the fathers-in-law.”“Ha, ha! ve shall see. Bot, Bonker, she is lofly!”The Baron awaited dinner with even more than his usual ardour. He dressed with the greatest care, and at an absurdly early hour was already urging his friend to come down and take their places. Indeed after a time there was no withholding him, and they finally took their seats in the dining-room before anybody else.[pg 129]At what seemed to the impatient Baron unconscionably long intervals a few people dropped in and began to study their menus and glance with an air of uncomfortable suspicion at their neighbours.“I vonder vill she gom,”he said three or four times at least.“Console yourself, my dear Baron,”his friend would reply;“they always come. That’s seldom the difficulty.”And the Baron would dally with his victuals in the most unwonted fashion, and growl at the rapidity with which the courses followed one another.“Do zey suppose ve vish to eat like——?”he began, and then laying his hand on his friend’s sleeve, he whispered,“She goms!”Mr Bunker turned his head just in time to see in the doorway the Countess of Grillyer and the Lady Alicia à Fyre.“Is she not fair?”asked the Baron, excitedly.“I entirely approve of your taste, Baron. I have only once seen any one quite like her before.”With a gratified smile the Baron filled his glass, while his friend seemed amused by some humorous reflection of his own.The Lady Alicia and her mother had taken their seats at a table a little way off, and at first their eyes never happened to turn in the direction of the two friends. But at last, after looking at the ceiling, the carpet, the walls, the other people, everything else in the room it seemed, Lady Alicia’s glance fell for an instant on the Baron. That nobleman looked as interesting as a[pg 130]mouthful of roast duck would permit him, but the glance passed serenely on to Mr Bunker. For a moment it remained serene; suddenly it became startled and puzzled, and at that instant Mr Bunker turned his own eyes full upon her, smiled slightly, and raised his glass to his lips.The glance fell, and the Lady Alicia blushed down to the diamonds in her necklace.The Baron insisted on lingering over his dinner till the charmer was finished, and so by a fortuitous coincidence they left the room immediately behind the Countess. The Baron passed them in the passage, and a few yards farther he looked round for his friend, and the Countess turned to look for her daughter.They saw Lady Alicia following with an intensely unconscious expression, while Mr Bunker was in the act of returning to the dining-room.“I wanted to secure a table for breakfast,”he explained.

The Baron and Mr Bunker walked arm-in-arm along the esplanade at St Egbert’s-on-Sea.

“Aha!”said the Baron,“zis is more fresh zan London!”

“Yes,”replied his friend;“we are now in the presence of that stimulating element which provides patriotic Britons with music-hall songs, and dyspeptic Britons with an appetite.”

A stirring breeze swept down the long white esplanade, threatening hats and troubling skirts; the pale-green south-coast sea rumbled up the shingle; the day was bright and pleasant for the time of year, and drove the Baron’s mischances from his head; altogether it seemed to Mr Bunker that the omens were good. They were both dressed in the smartest of tweed suits, and walked jauntily, like men who knew their own value. Every now and then, as they passed a pretty face, the Baron would say,“Aha, Bonker! zat is not so bad, eh?”

And Mr Bunker, who seemed not unwilling that his friend should find some entertaining distraction in St Egbert’s, would look at the owners of these faces with a prospector’s eye and his own unrivalled assurance.

They had walked up and down three or four times, when a desire for a different species of diversion began to overtake the Baron. It was the one kind of desire that the Baron never even tried to wrestle with.

“My vriend Bonker,”said he,“is it not somevere about time for loncheon, eh?”

“I should say it was precisely the hour.”

“Ha, ha! zen, let us gom and eat. Himmel, zis sea is ze fellow to make von hungry!”

The Baron had taken a private suite of rooms on the first floor of the best hotel in St Egbert’s, and after a very substantial lunch Mr Bunker stretched himself on the luxurious sitting-room sofa and announced his intention of having a nap.

“I shall go out,”said the Baron.“You vill not gom?”

“I shall leave you to make a single-handed conquest,”replied Mr Bunker.“Besides, I have a little matter I want to look into.”

So the Baron arranged his hat airily, at what he had perceived to be the most fashionable and effective English angle, and strutted off to the esplanade.

It was about two hours later that he burst excitedly into the room, crying,“Aha, mine Bonker! I haf disgovered zomzing!”and then he stopped in some surprise.“Ello, vat make you, my vriend?”

His friend, in fact, seemed to be somewhat singularly employed. Through a dense cloud of tobacco-smoke you could just pick him out of the depths of an armchair, his feet resting on the mantelpiece, while his lap and all the floor round about were covered with immense books.[pg 127]The Baron’s curiosity was still further excited by observing that they consisted principally of a London and a St Egbert’s directory, several volumes of a Dictionary of National Biography, and one or two peerages and county family compilations.

He looked up with a smile.“You may well wonder, my dear Baron. The fact is, I am looking for a name.”

“A name! vat name?”

“Alas! if I knew what it was I should stop looking, and I confess I’m rather sick of the job.”

“Vich vay do you look, zen?”

“Simply by wading my way through all the lists of names I could steal or borrow. It’s devilish dry work.”

“Ze name of a vriend, is it?”

“Yes; but I’m afraid I must wait till it comes. And what is this discovery, Baron? A petticoat, I presume. After all, they are the only things worth finding,”and he shut the books one after another.

“A petticoat with ze fairest girl inside it!”exclaimed the Baron, rapturously.

“Your eyes seem to have been singularly penetrating, Baron. Was she dark or fair, tall or short, fat or slender, widow, wife, or maid?”

“Fair, viz blue eyes, short pairhaps but not too short, slender as a—a—drom-stick, and I vould say a maid; at least I see vun stout old lady mit her, mozzer and daughter I soppose.”

“And did this piece of perfection seem to appreciate you?”

“Vy should I know? Zey are ze real ladies and pairtend[pg 128]not to see me, bot I zink zey notice me all ze same. Not‘lady vriends,’Bonker, ha, ha, ha!”

Mr Bunker laughed with reminiscent amusement, and inquired,“And how did the romance end—in a cab, Baron?”

“Ha, ha, ha!”laughed the Baron;“better zan zat, Bonker—moch better!”

Mr Bunker raised his eyebrows.

“It’s hardly the time of year for a romance to end in a bathing-machine. You followed the divinity to her rented heaven, perhaps?”

The Baron bent forward and answered in a stage whisper,“Zey live in zis hotel, Bonker!”

“Then I can only wish you joy, Baron, and if my funds allow me, send her a wedding present.”

“Ach, not quite so fast, my vriend! I am not caught so easy.”

“My dear fellow, a week at close quarters is sufficient to net any man.”

“Ven I marry,”replied the Baron,“moch most be considered. A von Blitzenberg does not mate viz every vun.”

“A good many families have made the same remark, but one does not always meet the fathers-in-law.”

“Ha, ha! ve shall see. Bot, Bonker, she is lofly!”

The Baron awaited dinner with even more than his usual ardour. He dressed with the greatest care, and at an absurdly early hour was already urging his friend to come down and take their places. Indeed after a time there was no withholding him, and they finally took their seats in the dining-room before anybody else.

At what seemed to the impatient Baron unconscionably long intervals a few people dropped in and began to study their menus and glance with an air of uncomfortable suspicion at their neighbours.

“I vonder vill she gom,”he said three or four times at least.

“Console yourself, my dear Baron,”his friend would reply;“they always come. That’s seldom the difficulty.”

And the Baron would dally with his victuals in the most unwonted fashion, and growl at the rapidity with which the courses followed one another.

“Do zey suppose ve vish to eat like——?”he began, and then laying his hand on his friend’s sleeve, he whispered,“She goms!”

Mr Bunker turned his head just in time to see in the doorway the Countess of Grillyer and the Lady Alicia à Fyre.

“Is she not fair?”asked the Baron, excitedly.

“I entirely approve of your taste, Baron. I have only once seen any one quite like her before.”

With a gratified smile the Baron filled his glass, while his friend seemed amused by some humorous reflection of his own.

The Lady Alicia and her mother had taken their seats at a table a little way off, and at first their eyes never happened to turn in the direction of the two friends. But at last, after looking at the ceiling, the carpet, the walls, the other people, everything else in the room it seemed, Lady Alicia’s glance fell for an instant on the Baron. That nobleman looked as interesting as a[pg 130]mouthful of roast duck would permit him, but the glance passed serenely on to Mr Bunker. For a moment it remained serene; suddenly it became startled and puzzled, and at that instant Mr Bunker turned his own eyes full upon her, smiled slightly, and raised his glass to his lips.

The glance fell, and the Lady Alicia blushed down to the diamonds in her necklace.

The Baron insisted on lingering over his dinner till the charmer was finished, and so by a fortuitous coincidence they left the room immediately behind the Countess. The Baron passed them in the passage, and a few yards farther he looked round for his friend, and the Countess turned to look for her daughter.

They saw Lady Alicia following with an intensely unconscious expression, while Mr Bunker was in the act of returning to the dining-room.

“I wanted to secure a table for breakfast,”he explained.

CHAPTER II.The Baron was in high hopes of seeing the fair unknown at breakfast, but it seemed she must be either breakfasting in her own room or lying long abed.“I think I shall go out for a little constitutional,”said Mr Bunker, when he had finished.“I suppose the hotel has a stronger attraction for you.”“Ach, yes, I shall remain,”his friend replied.“Pairhaps I may see zem.”[pg 131]“Take care then, Baron!”“I shall not propose till you return, Bonker!”“No,”said Mr Bunker to himself,“I don’t think you will.”Just outside St Egbert’s there is a high breezy sweep of downs, falling suddenly to a chalky seaward cliff. It overlooks the town and the undulating inland country and a great spread of shining sea; and even without a spy-glass you can see sail after sail and smoke-wreath after smoke-wreath go by all day long.But Mr Bunker had apparently walked there for other reasons than to see the view. He did stop once or twice, but it was only to scan the downs ahead, and at the sight of a fluttering skirt he showed no interest in anything else, but made a straight line for its owner. For her part, the lady seemed to await his coming. She gathered her countenance into an expression of as perfect unconcern as a little heightening of her colour would allow her, and returned his salute with rather a distant bow. But Mr Bunker was not to be damped by this hint of barbed wire. He held out his hand and exclaimed cordially,“My dear Lady Alicia! this is charming of you!”“Of course you understand, Mr Beveridge, it’s only——”“Perfectly,”he interrupted, gaily;“I understand everything I should and nothing I shouldn’t. In fact, I have altered little, except in the trifling matter of a beard, a moustache or two, and, by the way, a name.”“A name?”“I am now Francis Bunker, but as much at your service as ever.”[pg 132]“But why—I mean, have you really changed your name?”“Circumstances have changed it, just as circumstances shaved me.”Lady Alicia made a great endeavour to look haughty.“I do not quite understand, Mr——”“Bunker—a temporary title, but suggestive, and simple for the tradesmen.”“I do not understand your conduct. Why have you changed your name?”“Why not?”This retort was so evidently unanswerable that Lady Alicia changed her inquiry.“Where have you been?”“Till yesterday, in London.”“Then you didn’t go to your own parish?”she demanded, reproachfully.“There were difficulties,”he replied;“in fact, a certified lunatic is not in great demand as a parish priest. They seem to prefer them uncertified.”“But didn’t you try?”“Hard, but it was no use. The bishop was out of town, and I had to wait till his return; besides, my position was somewhat insecure. I have had at least two remarkable escapes since I saw you last.”“Are you safe here?”she asked, hurriedly.“With your consent, yes.”She looked a little troubled.“I don’t know that I am doing right, Mr Bev—Bunker, but——”“Thank you, my friend,”he interrupted, tenderly.[pg 133]“Don’t,”she began, hastily.“You mustn’t talk like——”“Francis Beveridge?”he interrupted.“The trouble is, this rascal Bunker bears an unconscionably awkward resemblance to our old friend.”“You must see that it is quite—ridiculous.”“Absurd,”he agreed,—“perfectly preposterous. I laugh whenever I think of it!”Poor Lady Alicia felt like a man at a telephone who has been connected with the wrong person. Again she made a desperate shift to fall back on a becoming pride.“What do you mean?”she demanded.“If I mean anything at all, which is always rather doubtful,”he replied, candidly,“I mean that Beveridge and his humbug were creatures of an occasion, just as Bunker and his are of another. The one occasion is passed, and with it the first entertaining gentleman has vanished into space. The second gentleman will doubtless follow when his time is up. In fact, I may be said to be a series of dissolving views.”“Then isn’t what you said true?”“I’m afraid you must be more specific; you see I’ve talked so much.”“What you said about yourself—and your work.”He shook his head humorously.“I have no means of checking my statements.”She looked at him in a troubled way, and then her eyes fell.“At least,”she said,“you won’t—you mustn’t treat me as—as you did.”[pg 134]“As Beveridge did? Certainly not; Bunker is the soul of circumspection. Besides, he doesn’t require to get out of an asylum.”“Then it was only to get away?”she cried, turning scarlet.“Let us call it so,”he replied, looking pensively out to sea.It seemed wiser to Lady Alicia to change the subject.“Who is the friend you are staying with?”she asked, suddenly.“My old friend the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, and your own most recent admirer,”he replied.“I am at present living with, in fact I may say upon, him.”“Does he know?”“If you meet him, you had perhaps better not inquire into my past history.”“I meant, does he know about—about your knowing me?”“Bless them!”thought Mr Bunker;“one forgets they’re notalwaysthinking about us!”“My noble friend has no idea that I have been so fortunate,”he replied.Lady Alicia looked relieved.“Who is he?”she asked.“A German nobleman of great wealth, long descent, and the most accommodating disposition. He is at present exploring England under my guidance, and I flatter myself that he has already seen and done a number of things that are not on most programmes.”Lady Alicia was silent for a minute. Then she said[pg 135]with a little hesitation,“Didn’t you get a letter from me?”“A letter? No,”he replied, in some surprise.“I wrote twice—because you asked me to, and I thought—I wondered if you were safe.”“To what address did you write?”“The address you gave me.”“And what was that?”he asked, still evidently puzzled.“You said care of the Archbishop of York would find you.”Mr Bunker abruptly looked the other way.“By Jove!”he said, as if lost in speculation,“I must find out what the matter was. I can’t imagine why they haven’t been forwarded.”Lady Alicia appeared a little dissatisfied.“Was that arealaddress?”she asked, suddenly.“Perfectly,”he replied;“as real as Pentonville Jail or the House of Commons.”(“And as likely to find me,”he added to himself.)Lady Alicia seemed to hesitate whether to pursue the subject further, but in the middle of her debate Mr Bunker asked,“By the way, has Lady Grillyer any recollection of having seen me before?”“No, she doesn’t remember you at all.”“Then we shall meet as strangers?”“Yes, I think it would be better; don’t you?”“It will save our imaginations certainly.”Lady Alicia looked at him as though she expected something more; but as nothing came, she said,“I think it’s time I went back.”[pg 136]“For the present thenau revoir, my dear Alicia. I beg your pardon, Lady Alicia; it was that rascal Beveridge who made the slip. It now remains to make your formal acquaintance.”“You—you mustn’t try!”“The deuce is in these people beginning with B!”he laughed.“They seem to do things without trying.”He pressed her hand, raised his hat, and started back to the town. She, on her part, lingered to let him get a clear start of her, and her blue eyes looked as though a breeze had blown across and ruffled them.Mr Bunker had reached the esplanade, and was sauntering easily back towards the hotel, looking at the people and smiling now and then to himself, when he observed with considerable astonishment two familiar figures strolling towards him. They were none other than the Baron and the Countess, engaged in animated conversation, and apparently on the very best terms with each other. At the sight of him the Baron beamed joyfully.“Aha, Bonker, so you haf returned!”he cried.“In ze meanvile I haf had vun great good fortune. Let me present my friend Mr Bonker, ze Lady Grillyer.”The Countess bowed most graciously, and raising a pair of tortoise-shell-rimmed eye-glasses mounted on a stem of the same material, looked at Mr Bunker through these with a by no means disapproving glance.At first sight it was evident that Lady Alicia must“take after”her noble father. The Countess was aquiline of nose, large of person, and emphatic in her voice and manner.[pg 137]“You are the‘showman,’Mr Bunker, are you not?”she said, with a smile for which many of her acquaintances would have given a tolerable percentage of their incomes.“It seems,”replied Mr Bunker, smiling back agreeably,“that the Baron is now the showman, and I must congratulate him on his first venture.”For an instant the Countess seemed a trifle taken aback. It was a considerable number of years since she had been addressed in precisely this strain, and in fact at no time had her admirers ventured quite so dashingly to the attack. But there was something entirely irresistible in Mr Bunker’s manner, partly perhaps because he never made the mistake of heeding a first rebuff. The Countess coughed, then smiled a little again, and said to the Baron,“You didn’t tell me that your showman supplied the little speeches as well.”“I could not know it; zere has not before been ze reason for a pretty speech,”responded the Baron, gallantly.If Lady Grillyer had been anybody else, one would have said that she actually giggled. Certainly a little wave of scandalised satisfaction rippled all over her.“Oh, really!”she cried,“I don’t know which of you is the worst offender.”All this time, as may be imagined, Mr Bunker had been in a state of high mystification at his friend’s unusual adroitness.“How the deuce did he get hold of her?”he said to himself.In the next pause the Baron solved the riddle.[pg 138]“You vil vunder, Bonker,”he said,“how I did gom to know ze Lady Grillyer.”“I envied, certainly,”replied his friend, with a side glance at the now purring Countess.“She vas of my introdogtions, bot till after you vent out zis morning I did not lairn her name. Zen I said to myself,‘Ze sun shines, Himmel is kind! Here now is ze fair Lady Grillyer—my introdogtion!’and zo zat is how, you see.”“To think of the Baron being here and our only finding each other out by chance!”said the Countess.“By a fortunate providence for me!”exclaimed the Baron, fervently.“Baron,”said the Countess, trying hard to look severe,“you must really keep some of these nice speeches for my daughter. Which reminds me, I wonder where she can be?”“Ach, here she goms!”cried the Baron.“Why, how did you know her?”asked the Countess.“I—I did see her last night at dinnair,”explained the Baron, turning red.“Ah, of course, I remember,”replied the Countess, in a matter-of-fact tone; but her motherly eye was sharp, and already it began to look on the highly eligible Rudolph with more approval than ever.“My daughter Alicia, the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, Mr Bunker,”she said the next moment.The Baron went nearly double as he bowed, and the flourish of his hat stirred the dust on the esplanade. Mr Bunker’s salutation was less profound, but his face expressed[pg 139]an almost equal degree of interested respect. Her mother thought that when one of the gentlemen was a nobleman with an indefinite number of thousands a-year and the other a person of so much discrimination, Lady Alicia’s own bow might have been a trifle less reserved. But then even the most astute mother cannot know the reasons for everything.

The Baron was in high hopes of seeing the fair unknown at breakfast, but it seemed she must be either breakfasting in her own room or lying long abed.

“I think I shall go out for a little constitutional,”said Mr Bunker, when he had finished.“I suppose the hotel has a stronger attraction for you.”

“Ach, yes, I shall remain,”his friend replied.“Pairhaps I may see zem.”

“Take care then, Baron!”

“I shall not propose till you return, Bonker!”

“No,”said Mr Bunker to himself,“I don’t think you will.”

Just outside St Egbert’s there is a high breezy sweep of downs, falling suddenly to a chalky seaward cliff. It overlooks the town and the undulating inland country and a great spread of shining sea; and even without a spy-glass you can see sail after sail and smoke-wreath after smoke-wreath go by all day long.

But Mr Bunker had apparently walked there for other reasons than to see the view. He did stop once or twice, but it was only to scan the downs ahead, and at the sight of a fluttering skirt he showed no interest in anything else, but made a straight line for its owner. For her part, the lady seemed to await his coming. She gathered her countenance into an expression of as perfect unconcern as a little heightening of her colour would allow her, and returned his salute with rather a distant bow. But Mr Bunker was not to be damped by this hint of barbed wire. He held out his hand and exclaimed cordially,“My dear Lady Alicia! this is charming of you!”

“Of course you understand, Mr Beveridge, it’s only——”

“Perfectly,”he interrupted, gaily;“I understand everything I should and nothing I shouldn’t. In fact, I have altered little, except in the trifling matter of a beard, a moustache or two, and, by the way, a name.”

“A name?”

“I am now Francis Bunker, but as much at your service as ever.”

“But why—I mean, have you really changed your name?”

“Circumstances have changed it, just as circumstances shaved me.”

Lady Alicia made a great endeavour to look haughty.“I do not quite understand, Mr——”

“Bunker—a temporary title, but suggestive, and simple for the tradesmen.”

“I do not understand your conduct. Why have you changed your name?”

“Why not?”

This retort was so evidently unanswerable that Lady Alicia changed her inquiry.

“Where have you been?”

“Till yesterday, in London.”

“Then you didn’t go to your own parish?”she demanded, reproachfully.

“There were difficulties,”he replied;“in fact, a certified lunatic is not in great demand as a parish priest. They seem to prefer them uncertified.”

“But didn’t you try?”

“Hard, but it was no use. The bishop was out of town, and I had to wait till his return; besides, my position was somewhat insecure. I have had at least two remarkable escapes since I saw you last.”

“Are you safe here?”she asked, hurriedly.

“With your consent, yes.”

She looked a little troubled.“I don’t know that I am doing right, Mr Bev—Bunker, but——”

“Thank you, my friend,”he interrupted, tenderly.

“Don’t,”she began, hastily.“You mustn’t talk like——”

“Francis Beveridge?”he interrupted.“The trouble is, this rascal Bunker bears an unconscionably awkward resemblance to our old friend.”

“You must see that it is quite—ridiculous.”

“Absurd,”he agreed,—“perfectly preposterous. I laugh whenever I think of it!”

Poor Lady Alicia felt like a man at a telephone who has been connected with the wrong person. Again she made a desperate shift to fall back on a becoming pride.

“What do you mean?”she demanded.

“If I mean anything at all, which is always rather doubtful,”he replied, candidly,“I mean that Beveridge and his humbug were creatures of an occasion, just as Bunker and his are of another. The one occasion is passed, and with it the first entertaining gentleman has vanished into space. The second gentleman will doubtless follow when his time is up. In fact, I may be said to be a series of dissolving views.”

“Then isn’t what you said true?”

“I’m afraid you must be more specific; you see I’ve talked so much.”

“What you said about yourself—and your work.”

He shook his head humorously.“I have no means of checking my statements.”

She looked at him in a troubled way, and then her eyes fell.

“At least,”she said,“you won’t—you mustn’t treat me as—as you did.”

“As Beveridge did? Certainly not; Bunker is the soul of circumspection. Besides, he doesn’t require to get out of an asylum.”

“Then it was only to get away?”she cried, turning scarlet.

“Let us call it so,”he replied, looking pensively out to sea.

It seemed wiser to Lady Alicia to change the subject.

“Who is the friend you are staying with?”she asked, suddenly.

“My old friend the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, and your own most recent admirer,”he replied.“I am at present living with, in fact I may say upon, him.”

“Does he know?”

“If you meet him, you had perhaps better not inquire into my past history.”

“I meant, does he know about—about your knowing me?”

“Bless them!”thought Mr Bunker;“one forgets they’re notalwaysthinking about us!”

“My noble friend has no idea that I have been so fortunate,”he replied.

Lady Alicia looked relieved.“Who is he?”she asked.

“A German nobleman of great wealth, long descent, and the most accommodating disposition. He is at present exploring England under my guidance, and I flatter myself that he has already seen and done a number of things that are not on most programmes.”

Lady Alicia was silent for a minute. Then she said[pg 135]with a little hesitation,“Didn’t you get a letter from me?”

“A letter? No,”he replied, in some surprise.

“I wrote twice—because you asked me to, and I thought—I wondered if you were safe.”

“To what address did you write?”

“The address you gave me.”

“And what was that?”he asked, still evidently puzzled.

“You said care of the Archbishop of York would find you.”

Mr Bunker abruptly looked the other way.

“By Jove!”he said, as if lost in speculation,“I must find out what the matter was. I can’t imagine why they haven’t been forwarded.”

Lady Alicia appeared a little dissatisfied.

“Was that arealaddress?”she asked, suddenly.

“Perfectly,”he replied;“as real as Pentonville Jail or the House of Commons.”(“And as likely to find me,”he added to himself.)

Lady Alicia seemed to hesitate whether to pursue the subject further, but in the middle of her debate Mr Bunker asked,“By the way, has Lady Grillyer any recollection of having seen me before?”

“No, she doesn’t remember you at all.”

“Then we shall meet as strangers?”

“Yes, I think it would be better; don’t you?”

“It will save our imaginations certainly.”

Lady Alicia looked at him as though she expected something more; but as nothing came, she said,“I think it’s time I went back.”

“For the present thenau revoir, my dear Alicia. I beg your pardon, Lady Alicia; it was that rascal Beveridge who made the slip. It now remains to make your formal acquaintance.”

“You—you mustn’t try!”

“The deuce is in these people beginning with B!”he laughed.“They seem to do things without trying.”

He pressed her hand, raised his hat, and started back to the town. She, on her part, lingered to let him get a clear start of her, and her blue eyes looked as though a breeze had blown across and ruffled them.

Mr Bunker had reached the esplanade, and was sauntering easily back towards the hotel, looking at the people and smiling now and then to himself, when he observed with considerable astonishment two familiar figures strolling towards him. They were none other than the Baron and the Countess, engaged in animated conversation, and apparently on the very best terms with each other. At the sight of him the Baron beamed joyfully.

“Aha, Bonker, so you haf returned!”he cried.“In ze meanvile I haf had vun great good fortune. Let me present my friend Mr Bonker, ze Lady Grillyer.”

The Countess bowed most graciously, and raising a pair of tortoise-shell-rimmed eye-glasses mounted on a stem of the same material, looked at Mr Bunker through these with a by no means disapproving glance.

At first sight it was evident that Lady Alicia must“take after”her noble father. The Countess was aquiline of nose, large of person, and emphatic in her voice and manner.

“You are the‘showman,’Mr Bunker, are you not?”she said, with a smile for which many of her acquaintances would have given a tolerable percentage of their incomes.

“It seems,”replied Mr Bunker, smiling back agreeably,“that the Baron is now the showman, and I must congratulate him on his first venture.”

For an instant the Countess seemed a trifle taken aback. It was a considerable number of years since she had been addressed in precisely this strain, and in fact at no time had her admirers ventured quite so dashingly to the attack. But there was something entirely irresistible in Mr Bunker’s manner, partly perhaps because he never made the mistake of heeding a first rebuff. The Countess coughed, then smiled a little again, and said to the Baron,“You didn’t tell me that your showman supplied the little speeches as well.”

“I could not know it; zere has not before been ze reason for a pretty speech,”responded the Baron, gallantly.

If Lady Grillyer had been anybody else, one would have said that she actually giggled. Certainly a little wave of scandalised satisfaction rippled all over her.

“Oh, really!”she cried,“I don’t know which of you is the worst offender.”

All this time, as may be imagined, Mr Bunker had been in a state of high mystification at his friend’s unusual adroitness.

“How the deuce did he get hold of her?”he said to himself.

In the next pause the Baron solved the riddle.

“You vil vunder, Bonker,”he said,“how I did gom to know ze Lady Grillyer.”

“I envied, certainly,”replied his friend, with a side glance at the now purring Countess.

“She vas of my introdogtions, bot till after you vent out zis morning I did not lairn her name. Zen I said to myself,‘Ze sun shines, Himmel is kind! Here now is ze fair Lady Grillyer—my introdogtion!’and zo zat is how, you see.”

“To think of the Baron being here and our only finding each other out by chance!”said the Countess.

“By a fortunate providence for me!”exclaimed the Baron, fervently.

“Baron,”said the Countess, trying hard to look severe,“you must really keep some of these nice speeches for my daughter. Which reminds me, I wonder where she can be?”

“Ach, here she goms!”cried the Baron.

“Why, how did you know her?”asked the Countess.

“I—I did see her last night at dinnair,”explained the Baron, turning red.

“Ah, of course, I remember,”replied the Countess, in a matter-of-fact tone; but her motherly eye was sharp, and already it began to look on the highly eligible Rudolph with more approval than ever.

“My daughter Alicia, the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, Mr Bunker,”she said the next moment.

The Baron went nearly double as he bowed, and the flourish of his hat stirred the dust on the esplanade. Mr Bunker’s salutation was less profound, but his face expressed[pg 139]an almost equal degree of interested respect. Her mother thought that when one of the gentlemen was a nobleman with an indefinite number of thousands a-year and the other a person of so much discrimination, Lady Alicia’s own bow might have been a trifle less reserved. But then even the most astute mother cannot know the reasons for everything.

CHAPTER III.“Alicia,”said the Countess,“it was really a most fortunate coincidence our meeting the Baron at St Egbert’s.”She paused for a reply and looked expectantly at her daughter. It was not the first time in the course of the morning that Lady Alicia had listened to similar observations, and perhaps that was why she answered somewhat listlessly,“Yes, wasn’t it?”The Countess frowned, and continued with emphasis,“I consider him one of the most agreeable and best informed young men I have ever met.”“Is he?”said Lady Alicia, absently.“I wonder, Alicia, you hadn’t noticed it,”her mother observed, severely;“you talked with him most of the afternoon. I should have thought that no observant, well-bred girl would have failed to have been struck with his air and conversation.”“I—I thought him very pleasant, mamma.”[pg 140]“I am glad you had so much sense. He isextremelypleasant.”As Lady Alicia made no reply, the Countess felt obliged to continue his list of virtues herself.“He is of most excellent family, Alicia, one of the oldest in Bavaria. I don’t remember what I heard his income was in pfennigs, or whatever they measure money by in Germany, but I know that it is more than £20,000 a-year in English money. A very large sum nowadays,”she added, as if £20,000 had grown since she was a girl.“Yes, mamma.”“He is considered, besides, an unusually promising and intelligent young nobleman, and in Germany, where noblemen are still constantly used, that says a great deal for him.”“Does it, mamma?”“Certainly it does. Education there is so severe that young Englishmen are beginning to know less than they ever did, and in most cases that isn’t saying much. Compare the Baron with the young men you meet here!”She looked at her daughter triumphantly, and Alicia could only reply,“Yes, mamma?”“Compare them and see the difference. Look at the Baron’s friend, Mr Bunker, who is a very agreeable and amusing man, I admit, but look at the difference!”“What is it?”Alicia could not help asking.“Whatis it, Alicia! It is—ah—it’s—er—it is, in short, the effect of a carefully cultivated mind and good blood.”[pg 141]“But don’t you think Mr Bunker cultivated, mamma—and—and—well-bred?”“He has an amusing way of saying things,—but then you must remember that the Baron is doubtless equally entertaining in his native language,—and possibly a superficial knowledge of a few of the leading questions of the day; but the Baron talked to me for half an hour on the relations of something or other in Germany to—er—something else—a very important point, I assure you.”“I always thought him very clever,”said Lady Alicia with a touch of warmth, and then instantly changed colour at the horrible slip.“You always,”said the Countess in alarmed astonishment;“you hardly spoke to him yesterday, and—had you met him before?”“I—I meant the Baron, mamma.”“But I have just been saying that he wasunusuallyclever.”“But I thought, I mean it seemed as though you considered him only well informed.”Lady Alicia’s blushes and confusion deepened. Her mother looked at her with a softening eye. Suddenly she rose, kissed her affectionately, and said with the tenderness of triumph,“Mydeargirl! Of course he is; clever, well informed, and a mostdesirableyoung man. My Alicia could not do——”She stopped, as if she thought this was perhaps a little premature (though the Countess’s methods inclined to the summary and decisive), and again kissing her daughter[pg 142]affectionately, remarked gaily,“Let me see, why, it’s almost time we went for our little walk! We mustn’t really disappoint those young men. I am in the middle of such an amusing discussion with Mr Bunker, who is really a very sensible man and quite worthy of the Baron’s judgment.”Poor Lady Alicia hardly knew whether to feel more relieved at her escape or dismayed at the construction put upon her explanation. She went out to meet the Baron, determined to give no further colour to her mother’s unlucky misconception. The Countess was far too experienced and determined a general to leave it at all doubtful who should walk by whose side, and who should have the opportunity of appreciating whose merits, but Lady Alicia was quite resolved that the Baron’s blandishments should fall on stony ground.But a soft heart and an undecided mouth are treacherous companions. The Baron was so amiable and so gallant, that at the end of half an hour she was obliged to abate the strictness of her resolution. She should treat him with the friendliness of a brother. She learned that he had no sisters: her decision was confirmed.The enamoured and delighted Baron was in the seventh heaven of happy loquacity. He poured out particulars of his travels, his more recordable adventures, his opinions on various social and political matters, and at last even of the family ghost, the hereditary carpet-beatership, and the glories of Bavaria. And Lady Alicia listened with what he could not doubt was an interest touched with tenderness.[pg 143]“I wonder,”she said, artlessly,“that you find anything to admire in England—compared with Bavaria, I mean.”“Two zings I haf not zere,”replied the Baron, waving his hand round towards the horizon.“Vun is ze vet sheet of flowing sea—says not your poet so? Ze ozzer”(laying his hand on his heart)“is ze Lady Alicia à Fyre.”There are some people who catch sentiment whenever it happens to be in the air, just as others almost equally unfortunate regularly take hay-fever.Lady Alicia’s reply was much softer than she intended, especially as she could have told anybody that the Baron’s compliment was the merest figure of speech.“You needn’t have included me: I’m sureI’mnot a great attraction.”“Ze sea is less, so zat leaves none,”the Baron smiled.“Didn’t you see anybody—I mean, anything in London that attracted you—that you liked?”“Zat I liked, yes, zat pairhaps for the moment attracted me; but not zat shall still attract me ven I am gone avay.”The Baron sighed this time, and she felt impelled to reply, with the most sisterly kindness,“I—we should, of course, like to think that you didn’t forget usaltogether.”“You need not fear.”Then Lady Alicia began to realise that this was more like a second cousin than a brother, and with sudden sprightliness she cried,“I wonder where that steamer’s going!”[pg 144]The Baron turned his eyes towards his first-named attraction, but for a professed lover of the ocean his interest appeared slight. He only replied absently,“Ach, zo?”A little way behind them walked Mr Bunker and the Countess. The attention of Lady Grillyer was divided between the agreeable conversation of her companion and the pleasant spectacle of a fabulous number of pfennigs a-year bending its titled head over her daughter. In the middle of one of Mr Bunker’s most amusing stories she could not forbear interrupting with a complacent“theydomake a very handsome couple!”Mr Bunker politely stopped his narrative, and looked critically from his friend’s gaily checked back to Lady Alicia’s trim figure.“Pray go on with your story, Mr Bunker,”said the Countess, hastily, realising that she had thought a little too loudly.“They are like,”responded Mr Bunker, replying to her first remark—“they are like a pair of gloves.”The Countess raised her brows and looked at him sharply.“I mean, of course, the best quality.”“I think,”said the Countess, suspiciously,“that you spoke a little carelessly.”“My simile was a little premature?”“I think so,”said the Countess, decisively.“Let us call them then an odd pair,”smiled Mr Bunker, unruffled;“and only hope that they’ll turn out to be the same size and different hands.”[pg 145]The Countess actually condescended to smile back.“She is adearchild,”she murmured.“His income, I think, is sufficient,”he answered.Humour was not conspicuous in the Grillyer family. The Countess replied seriously,“I am one of those out-of-date people, Mr Bunker, who consider some things come before money, but the Baron’s birth and position are fortunately unimpeachable.”“While his mental qualities,”said Mr Bunker,“are, in my experience, almost unique.”The Countess was confirmed in her opinion of Mr Bunker’s discrimination.Late that night, after they had parted with their friends, the Baron smoked in the most unwonted silence while Mr Bunker dozed on the sofa. Several times Rudolph threw restive glances at his friend, as if he had something on his mind that he needed a helping hand to unburden himself of. At last the silence grew so intolerable that he screwed up his courage and with desperate resolution exclaimed,“Bonker!”Mr Bunker opened his eyes and sat up.“Bonker, I am in loff!”Mr Bunker smiled and stretched himself out again.“I have also been in love,”he replied.“You are not now?”“Alas! no.”“Vy alas?”“Because follieswithoutillusions get so infernally dull, Baron.”The Baron smiled a little foolishly.[pg 146]“I haf ze illusions, I fear.”Then he broke out enthusiastically,“Ach, bot is she not lofly, Bonker? If she will bot lof me back I shall be ze happiest man out of heaven!”“You have wasted no time, Baron.”The Baron shook his head in melancholy pleasure.“You are quite sure it is really love this time?”his friend pursued.“Qvite!”said the Baron, with the firmness of a martyr.“There are so many imitations.”“Not so close zat zey can deceive!”“Ha, ha, ha!”laughed Mr Bunker.“These first symptoms are common to them all, and yet the varieties of the disease are almost beyond counting. I myself have suffered from it in eight different forms. There was the virulent, spotted-all-over variety, known as calf-love; there was the kind that accompanied itself by a course of the Restoration dramatists; another form I may call the strayed-Platonic, and that may be subdivided into at least two; then there was——”“Schtop! schtop!”cried the Baron.“Ha, ha, ha! Zat will do! Teufel! I most examine my heart strictly. And yet, Bonker, I zink my loff is anozzer kind—zereal!”“They are all that, Baron; but have it your own way. Anything I can do to make you worse shall be done.”“Zanks, my best of friends,”said the Baron, warmly, seizing his hand;“I knew you would stand by me!”Mr Bunker gave a little laugh, and returning the pressure, replied,“My dear fellow, I’d do anything to oblige a friend in such an interesting condition.”

“Alicia,”said the Countess,“it was really a most fortunate coincidence our meeting the Baron at St Egbert’s.”

She paused for a reply and looked expectantly at her daughter. It was not the first time in the course of the morning that Lady Alicia had listened to similar observations, and perhaps that was why she answered somewhat listlessly,“Yes, wasn’t it?”

The Countess frowned, and continued with emphasis,“I consider him one of the most agreeable and best informed young men I have ever met.”

“Is he?”said Lady Alicia, absently.

“I wonder, Alicia, you hadn’t noticed it,”her mother observed, severely;“you talked with him most of the afternoon. I should have thought that no observant, well-bred girl would have failed to have been struck with his air and conversation.”

“I—I thought him very pleasant, mamma.”

“I am glad you had so much sense. He isextremelypleasant.”

As Lady Alicia made no reply, the Countess felt obliged to continue his list of virtues herself.

“He is of most excellent family, Alicia, one of the oldest in Bavaria. I don’t remember what I heard his income was in pfennigs, or whatever they measure money by in Germany, but I know that it is more than £20,000 a-year in English money. A very large sum nowadays,”she added, as if £20,000 had grown since she was a girl.

“Yes, mamma.”

“He is considered, besides, an unusually promising and intelligent young nobleman, and in Germany, where noblemen are still constantly used, that says a great deal for him.”

“Does it, mamma?”

“Certainly it does. Education there is so severe that young Englishmen are beginning to know less than they ever did, and in most cases that isn’t saying much. Compare the Baron with the young men you meet here!”

She looked at her daughter triumphantly, and Alicia could only reply,“Yes, mamma?”

“Compare them and see the difference. Look at the Baron’s friend, Mr Bunker, who is a very agreeable and amusing man, I admit, but look at the difference!”

“What is it?”Alicia could not help asking.

“Whatis it, Alicia! It is—ah—it’s—er—it is, in short, the effect of a carefully cultivated mind and good blood.”

“But don’t you think Mr Bunker cultivated, mamma—and—and—well-bred?”

“He has an amusing way of saying things,—but then you must remember that the Baron is doubtless equally entertaining in his native language,—and possibly a superficial knowledge of a few of the leading questions of the day; but the Baron talked to me for half an hour on the relations of something or other in Germany to—er—something else—a very important point, I assure you.”

“I always thought him very clever,”said Lady Alicia with a touch of warmth, and then instantly changed colour at the horrible slip.

“You always,”said the Countess in alarmed astonishment;“you hardly spoke to him yesterday, and—had you met him before?”

“I—I meant the Baron, mamma.”

“But I have just been saying that he wasunusuallyclever.”

“But I thought, I mean it seemed as though you considered him only well informed.”

Lady Alicia’s blushes and confusion deepened. Her mother looked at her with a softening eye. Suddenly she rose, kissed her affectionately, and said with the tenderness of triumph,“Mydeargirl! Of course he is; clever, well informed, and a mostdesirableyoung man. My Alicia could not do——”

She stopped, as if she thought this was perhaps a little premature (though the Countess’s methods inclined to the summary and decisive), and again kissing her daughter[pg 142]affectionately, remarked gaily,“Let me see, why, it’s almost time we went for our little walk! We mustn’t really disappoint those young men. I am in the middle of such an amusing discussion with Mr Bunker, who is really a very sensible man and quite worthy of the Baron’s judgment.”

Poor Lady Alicia hardly knew whether to feel more relieved at her escape or dismayed at the construction put upon her explanation. She went out to meet the Baron, determined to give no further colour to her mother’s unlucky misconception. The Countess was far too experienced and determined a general to leave it at all doubtful who should walk by whose side, and who should have the opportunity of appreciating whose merits, but Lady Alicia was quite resolved that the Baron’s blandishments should fall on stony ground.

But a soft heart and an undecided mouth are treacherous companions. The Baron was so amiable and so gallant, that at the end of half an hour she was obliged to abate the strictness of her resolution. She should treat him with the friendliness of a brother. She learned that he had no sisters: her decision was confirmed.

The enamoured and delighted Baron was in the seventh heaven of happy loquacity. He poured out particulars of his travels, his more recordable adventures, his opinions on various social and political matters, and at last even of the family ghost, the hereditary carpet-beatership, and the glories of Bavaria. And Lady Alicia listened with what he could not doubt was an interest touched with tenderness.

“I wonder,”she said, artlessly,“that you find anything to admire in England—compared with Bavaria, I mean.”

“Two zings I haf not zere,”replied the Baron, waving his hand round towards the horizon.“Vun is ze vet sheet of flowing sea—says not your poet so? Ze ozzer”(laying his hand on his heart)“is ze Lady Alicia à Fyre.”

There are some people who catch sentiment whenever it happens to be in the air, just as others almost equally unfortunate regularly take hay-fever.

Lady Alicia’s reply was much softer than she intended, especially as she could have told anybody that the Baron’s compliment was the merest figure of speech.

“You needn’t have included me: I’m sureI’mnot a great attraction.”

“Ze sea is less, so zat leaves none,”the Baron smiled.

“Didn’t you see anybody—I mean, anything in London that attracted you—that you liked?”

“Zat I liked, yes, zat pairhaps for the moment attracted me; but not zat shall still attract me ven I am gone avay.”

The Baron sighed this time, and she felt impelled to reply, with the most sisterly kindness,“I—we should, of course, like to think that you didn’t forget usaltogether.”

“You need not fear.”

Then Lady Alicia began to realise that this was more like a second cousin than a brother, and with sudden sprightliness she cried,“I wonder where that steamer’s going!”

The Baron turned his eyes towards his first-named attraction, but for a professed lover of the ocean his interest appeared slight. He only replied absently,“Ach, zo?”

A little way behind them walked Mr Bunker and the Countess. The attention of Lady Grillyer was divided between the agreeable conversation of her companion and the pleasant spectacle of a fabulous number of pfennigs a-year bending its titled head over her daughter. In the middle of one of Mr Bunker’s most amusing stories she could not forbear interrupting with a complacent“theydomake a very handsome couple!”

Mr Bunker politely stopped his narrative, and looked critically from his friend’s gaily checked back to Lady Alicia’s trim figure.

“Pray go on with your story, Mr Bunker,”said the Countess, hastily, realising that she had thought a little too loudly.

“They are like,”responded Mr Bunker, replying to her first remark—“they are like a pair of gloves.”

The Countess raised her brows and looked at him sharply.

“I mean, of course, the best quality.”

“I think,”said the Countess, suspiciously,“that you spoke a little carelessly.”

“My simile was a little premature?”

“I think so,”said the Countess, decisively.

“Let us call them then an odd pair,”smiled Mr Bunker, unruffled;“and only hope that they’ll turn out to be the same size and different hands.”

The Countess actually condescended to smile back.

“She is adearchild,”she murmured.

“His income, I think, is sufficient,”he answered.

Humour was not conspicuous in the Grillyer family. The Countess replied seriously,“I am one of those out-of-date people, Mr Bunker, who consider some things come before money, but the Baron’s birth and position are fortunately unimpeachable.”

“While his mental qualities,”said Mr Bunker,“are, in my experience, almost unique.”

The Countess was confirmed in her opinion of Mr Bunker’s discrimination.

Late that night, after they had parted with their friends, the Baron smoked in the most unwonted silence while Mr Bunker dozed on the sofa. Several times Rudolph threw restive glances at his friend, as if he had something on his mind that he needed a helping hand to unburden himself of. At last the silence grew so intolerable that he screwed up his courage and with desperate resolution exclaimed,“Bonker!”

Mr Bunker opened his eyes and sat up.

“Bonker, I am in loff!”

Mr Bunker smiled and stretched himself out again.

“I have also been in love,”he replied.

“You are not now?”

“Alas! no.”

“Vy alas?”

“Because follieswithoutillusions get so infernally dull, Baron.”

The Baron smiled a little foolishly.

“I haf ze illusions, I fear.”Then he broke out enthusiastically,“Ach, bot is she not lofly, Bonker? If she will bot lof me back I shall be ze happiest man out of heaven!”

“You have wasted no time, Baron.”

The Baron shook his head in melancholy pleasure.

“You are quite sure it is really love this time?”his friend pursued.

“Qvite!”said the Baron, with the firmness of a martyr.

“There are so many imitations.”

“Not so close zat zey can deceive!”

“Ha, ha, ha!”laughed Mr Bunker.“These first symptoms are common to them all, and yet the varieties of the disease are almost beyond counting. I myself have suffered from it in eight different forms. There was the virulent, spotted-all-over variety, known as calf-love; there was the kind that accompanied itself by a course of the Restoration dramatists; another form I may call the strayed-Platonic, and that may be subdivided into at least two; then there was——”

“Schtop! schtop!”cried the Baron.“Ha, ha, ha! Zat will do! Teufel! I most examine my heart strictly. And yet, Bonker, I zink my loff is anozzer kind—zereal!”

“They are all that, Baron; but have it your own way. Anything I can do to make you worse shall be done.”

“Zanks, my best of friends,”said the Baron, warmly, seizing his hand;“I knew you would stand by me!”

Mr Bunker gave a little laugh, and returning the pressure, replied,“My dear fellow, I’d do anything to oblige a friend in such an interesting condition.”

Back to Index Next