Considerable difficulty had to be overcome at the Bristol in the matter of rooms.  Without going into details, Brock resignedly took the only room left in the crowded hotel—­a six by ten cubby-hole on the top floor overlooking the air-shaft.  He had to go down one flight for his morning tub, and he never got it because he refused to stand in line and await his turn.  Mrs. Medcroft had the choicest room in the hotel, looking down upon the beautiful Kaerntner-Ring.  Constance proposed, in the goodness of her heart, to give up to Brock her own room, adjoining that of her sister, provided Edith would take her in to sleep with her.  Edith was perfectly willing, but interposed the sage conclusion that gossiping menials might not appreciate a preference so unique.

Mr. Roxbury Medcroft’s sky parlour adjoined the elevator shaft.  The head of his bed was in close proximity to the upper mechanism of the lift, a thin wall intervening.  A French architect, who had a room hard by, met Brock in the hall, hollow-eyed and haggard, on the morning after their first night.  He shouted lugubrious congratulations in Brock’s ear, just as if Brock’s ear had not been harassed a whole night long by shrieking wheels and rasping cables.

“Monsieur is very fortunate in being so afflicted,” he boomed.  “A thousand times in the night have I wished that I might be deaf also.  Ah, even an affliction such as yours, monsieur, has its benedictions!”

Matters drifted along smoothly, even merrily, for several days.  They were all young and full of the joy of living.  They laughed in secret over the mishaps and perils; they whiffed and enjoyed the spice that filled the atmosphere in which they lived.  They visited the gardens and the Hofs, the Chateau at Schoenbrunn, the Imperial stables, the gay “Venice in Vienna”; they attended the opera and the concerts, ever in a most circumspect “trinity,” as Brock had come to classify their parties.  Like a dutiful husband, he always included his wife in the expeditions.

“You are not only a most exemplary wife, Mrs. Medcroft,” he declared, “but an unusually agreeable chaperon.  I don’t know how Constance and I could get on without you.”

But the day of severest trial was now at hand.  The Rodneys were arriving on the fifth day from Berlin.  Despite the fact that the Seattle “connections” had never seen the illustrious Medcroft, husband to their distant cousin, there still remained the disturbing fear that they would recognise—­or rather fail to recognise him!—­from chance pictures that might have come to their notice.  Besides, there was always the possibility that they had seen or even met Brock in New York.  He lugubriously admitted that he had met unfortunate thousands whom he had promptly forgotten but who seldom failed to remember him.  It is not surprising, then, that the Medcrofts, ex parte, were in a state of perturbation,—­a condition which did not relax in the least as the time drew near for the arrival of the five o’clock train from the north.  Constance strove faithfully, even valiantly, to inject confidence into the souls of the prime conspirators.