“Did they ask any questions about us?” I said, guilelessly.

“Yes, heaps.  And when I told them how devoted my wife was to the Empress Elizabeth they offered to make up a party to show us two of the shrines she built near here, and invited us to dine afterward.  So I made it for this afternoon at three.  Don’t tell Bee.  Let’s surprise her.  Her eyes will pop clear out of her head when she sees them.”

Within ten minutes I had told Bee everything I knew, and had even enlarged upon it a little, and Bee, in a holy delight, was preparing to robe herself in costly array.  She solemnly promised me to be surprised when she saw them.

Only two of them could leave—­The One, whose name shall be Count Andreae von Engel, and the other, Baron Oscar von Furzmann.  They had a four-seated carriage for us, while they accompanied us on horseback.

That drive was one of the most romantic episodes which ever came into my prosaic life.  To be sure I was not in the romance at all,—­neither one of those bottle-green knights had an eye for me—­but I was there, and I saw and heard and enjoyed it more than anybody.

Bee, with the craft of a fox, offered to sit riding backward with Jimmie, knowing that she must thus perforce be face to face with the horsemen.  But in this she was outwitted by a mere man, but a man skilled in intrigue and court diplomacy.  Although the road was narrow and dangerous, twisting over mountains and beside rushing streams, The One, in order to feast his eyes on Mrs. Jimmie, permitted his horse to curvet and caracole as if he were in tourney.  Jimmie, while the count was doing it, managed to whisper to me:  “Tom Sawyer showing off,” but I knew that it was for a second purpose which counted for even more than the first.

I must admit that this Austrian diplomat was very skilful, and managed it in a way to throw the unsuspicious wholly off his guard, for, in order not to make his manoeuvres too marked, he often rode ahead of the carriage, when, by turning in his saddle, he could look back and fling his ardent glances in our direction.  They not only overshot me, but glanced as harmlessly off Mrs. Jimmie’s arrow-proof armour of complete unconsciousness as if they had hurtled aimlessly over her handsome head.

I was in ecstasies, for Bee’s wholesome admiration of her stunning officer and his undeniably unusual horsemanship prevented her from being rendered in any way uncomfortable by his action, for truth to tell, Bee was a target for the roving glances of Baron von Furzmann, but he was so hopelessly the wrong man that she not only was unaware of it then but vehemently disclaimed it when I enlightened her later.  Alas and alack!  The wrong man is always the wrong man, and never can take the place of the right man, no matter what his country or speech.

It was supremely interesting to talk with men who had known the beautiful Empress well; to whom her living beauty was as familiar as her pictured loveliness was to us.  We plied them with countless questions as to her wonderful horsemanship, her daily appearance, her dress, her conversation, and her learning.  Their enthusiastic praise of her was genuine and spontaneous.