At my happy remark as to having been hitherto oblivious of his existence, his face falls in the old lowering way I remember so well, and that brings back to me so forcibly the Prager Strasse, the Zwinger, the even sunshine, that favored my honey-moon; but at the heartily-expressed joy at seeing him, with which I conclude, he cheers up again.  If he had known that I was in so reduced a state that I should have enjoyed a colloquy with a chimney-sweep, and not despised exchanging opinions with a dustman, he would not have thought my admission worth much.

“So you have come at last,” he says, holding my hand, and looking at me with those long dark eyes that I would swear were black had not a conscientious and thorough daylight scrutiny of them assured me long ago that they were hazel.

“Yes,” say I, cheerfully; “I told you you would catch sight of us, sooner or later, if you waited long enough.”

“And your tenants never dragged you in, after all?”

“No,” say I; “we did not give them the chance.  But how do you know?  Were you peeping out of your lodge?  If I had remembered that you lived there, I would have been on the lookout for you.”

“You had, of course, entirely forgotten so insignificant a fact?” he says, with a tone of pique.

That happy one! how well I recollect it!  I feel quite fondly toward it; it reminds me so strongly of the Linkesches Bad, of the brisk band, and of Roger smoking and smiling at me with his gray eyes across our Mai-trank.

“Yes,” I say, contritely, “I am ashamed to say I had—­quite; but you see I have had a good many things to think of lately.”

At this point it strikes me that he must have forgotten that he has my hand, so I quietly, and without offense, resume it.

“And you are alone—­Sir Roger has left you quite alone here?”

“Yes,” say I, lachrymosely; “is not it dreadful? I never was so miserable in my life; I do not think I ever was by myself for a whole night before, and”—­(lowering my voice to a nervous whisper)—­ “they tell me there is a ghost somewhere about.  Did you ever hear of it?—­and the furniture gives such cracks!”

“And—­he has gone by himself?” he continues, still harping on the same string, as if unable to leave it.

“Yes,” reply I, laconically, hanging my head, for this is a topic on which I feel always guilty, and never diffuse.

“H’m!” he says, ruminatingly, and as if addressing the remark more to himself than to me.  “I suppose it is difficult to get out of old habits, and into new ones, all of a sudden.”

“I do not know what you mean by old habits and new habits,” cry I, angrily; “if you think he did not want me to go with him, you are very much mistaken; he would have much rather that I had.”

“But you” looking at me penetratingly, and speaking with a sort of alacrity, “you did not see it?  I remember of old” (with a smile) “your abhorrence of the sea.”