“A little fun,” repeated the Baroness in a breathless voice.  “What kind of fun?”

“I know not,” said he, turning once more to stare out of the window.

To this dignified representative of a particularly dignified State even the trees of Belgrave Square seemed at that moment a trifle too conventionally perpendicular.  If they would but dance and wave their boughs he would have greeted their greenness more gladly.  A good-looking nursemaid wheeled a perambulator beneath their shade, and though she never looked his way, he took a wicked pleasure in surreptitiously closing first one eye and then the other in her direction.  This might not entirely satisfy the aspirations of his soul, yet it seemed to serve as some vent for his pent-up spirit.  He turned to his spouse with a pleasantly meditative air.

“I should like to see old Bonker vunce more,” he observed.

“Bunker?  You mean Mr. Mandell-Essington?” said she, with an apprehensive note in her voice.

“To me he vill alvays be Bonker.”

The Baroness looked at him reproachfully.

“You promised me, Rudolph, you would see as little as possible of Mr. Essington.”

“Oh, ja, as leetle—­as possible,” answered the Baron, though not with his most ingenuous air.  “Besides, it is tree years since I promised.  For tree years I have seen nozing.  My love Alicia, you vould not have me forget mine friends altogezzer?”

But the Baroness had too vivid a recollection of their last (and only) visit to England since their marriage.  By a curious coincidence that also was three years ago.

“When you last met you remember what happened?” she asked, with an ominous hint of emotion in her accents .

“My love, how often have I eggsplained?  Zat night you mean, I did schleep in mine hat because I had got a cold in my head.  I vas not dronk, no more zan you.  Vat you found in my pocket vas a mere joke, and ze cabman who called next day vas jost vat I told him to his ogly face—­a blackmail.”

“You gave him money to go away.”

“A Blitzenberg does not bargain mit cabmen,” said the Baron loftily.

His wife’s spirits began to revive.  There seemed to speak the owner of Fogelschloss, the haughty magnate of Bavaria.

“You have too much self-respect to wish to find yourself in such a position again,” she said.  “I know you have, Rudolph!”

The Baron was silent.  This appeal met with distinctly less response than she confidently counted upon.  In a graver note she inquired—­

“You know what mother thinks of Mr. Essington?”

“Your mozzer is a vise old lady, Alicia; but we do not zink ze same on all opinions.”

“She will be exceedingly displeased if you—­well, if you do anything that she thoroughly disapproves of.”

The Baron left the window and took his wife’s plump hand affectionately within his own broad palm.