Tom descends, bowing courteously, apologises for having been absent when the highly distinguished gentleman arrived; and turning to the Bursch, begs him to transmit to his friend who has run away his apologies for the absurd mistake which led him to, etc. etc.

The Polizeirath looks at him with much the same blank astonishment as the gendarme had done; and at last ends by lifting up his hands, and bursting into an enormous German laugh; and no one on earth can laugh as a German can, so genially and lovingly, and with such intense self-enjoyment.

“Oh, you English! you English!  You are all mad, I think!  Nothing can shame you, and nothing can frighten you!  Potz!  I believe when your Guards at Alma walked into that battery the other day, every one of them was whistling your Jim Crow, even after he was shot dead!” And the jolly Polizeirath laughed at his own joke, till the mountain rang.  “But you must leave the country, sir; indeed you must.  We cannot permit such conduct here—­I am very sorry.”

“I entreat you not to apologise, sir.  In any case, I was going to Alf by eight o’clock, to meet the steamer for Treves.  I am on my way to the war in the East, via Marseilles.  If you would, therefore, be so kind as to allow the gendarme to return me that second revolver, which also belongs to me—­”

“Give him his pistol!” shouted the magistrate.

“Potz!  Let us be rid of him at any cost, and live in peace, like honest Germans.  Ah, poor Queen Victoria!  What a lot!  To have the government of five-and-twenty million such!”

“Not five-and-twenty millions,” says Sabina.

“That would include the ladies; and we are not mad too, surely, your Excellency?”

The Polizeirath likes to be called your Excellency, of course, or any other mighty title which does or does not belong to him; and that Sabina knows full well.

“Ah, my dear madam, how do I know that?  The English ladies do every day here what no other dames would dare or dream—­what then, must you be at home?  Ach! your poor husbands!”

“Mr. Thurnall!” calls Marie, from behind.  “Mr. Thurnall!”

Tom comes, with a quaint, dogged smile on his face.

“You see him, Mr. Stangrave!  You see the man who risked for me liberty, life,—­who rescued me from slavery, shame, suicide,—­who was to me a brother, a father, for years!—­without whose disinterested heroism you would never have set eyes on the face which you pretend to love.  And you repay him by suspicion—­insult—­Apologise to him, sir!  Ask his pardon now, here, utterly, humbly:  or never speak to Marie Lavington again!”

Tom looked first at her, and then at Stangrave.  Marie was convulsed with excitement; her thin cheeks were crimson, her eyes flashed very flame.  Stangrave was pale—­calm outwardly, but evidently not within.  He was looking on the ground, in thought so intense that he hardly seemed to hear Marie.  Poor fellow! he had heard enough in the last ten minutes to bewilder any brain.