Stangrave stamped with rage—­upon a Prussian officer’s thin boot.

“Ten thousand pardons!”

“You are excused, dear sir, you are excused,” says the good-natured German, with a wicked smile, which raises a blush on Stangrave’s cheek.  “Your eyes were dazzled; why not? it is not often that one sees two such suns together in the same sky.  But calm yourself; the boat stops at Coblentz.”

Stangrave could not well call the man of war to account for his impertinence; he had had his toes half crushed, and had a right to indemnify himself as he thought fit.  And with a hundred more apologies, Stangrave prepared to dart across the bridge as soon as it was closed.

Alas! after the steamer, as the fates would have it, came lumbering down one of those monster timber rafts; and it was a full half hour before Stangrave could get across, having suffered all the while the torments of Tantalus, as he watched the boat sweep round to the pier, and discharge its freight, to be scattered whither he knew not.  At last he got across, and went in chase to the nearest hotel:  but they were not there; thence to the next, and the next, till he had hunted half the hotels in the town; but hunted all in vain.

He is rushing wildly back again, to try if he can obtain any clue at the steam-boat pier, through the narrow, dirty street at the back of the Rhine Cavalier, when he is stopped short by a mighty German embrace, and a German kiss on either cheek, as the kiss of a housemaid’s broom; while a jolly voice shouts in English:—­

“Ah, my dear, dear friend! and you would pass me!  Whither the hangman so fast are you running in the mud!”

“My dear Salomon!  But let me go, I beseech you; I am in search—­”

“In search?” cries the jolly Jew banker,—­“for the philosopher’s stone?  You had all that man could want a week since, except that.  Search no more, but come home with me; and we will have a night as of the gods on Olympus!”

“My dearest fellow, I am looking for two ladies!”

“Two? ah, rogue! shall not one suffice?”

“Don’t, my dearest fellow!  I am looking for two English ladies.”

“Potz!  You shall find two hundred in the hotels, ugly and fair; but the two fairest are gone this two hours.”

“When?—­which?” cries Stangrave, suspecting at once.

“Sabina Mellot, and a Sultana—­I thought her of The Nation, and would have offered my hand on the spot:  but Madame Mellot says she is a Gentile.”

“Gone?  And you have seen them!  Where?”

“To Bertrich.  They had luncheon with my mother, and then started by private post.”

“I must follow.”

“Ach lieber?  But it will be dark in an hour.”

“What matter?”

“But you shall find them to-morrow, just as well as to-day.  They stay at Bertrich for a fortnight more.  They have been there now a month, and only left it last week for a pleasure tour, across to the Ahrthal, and so back by Andernach.”