“Oh!  No, thanks.  The train makes such a beastly racket, don’t you know.”

“They told me at the Bristol you were deaf, but—­Oh, I say, old man, I’m sorry.  Which ear is it?”

“The one next to you,” replied Brock, recovering from his confusion.  “I hear perfectly well with the other one.”

“Yes,” drawled Freddie, with a wink, “so I’ve observed.”  After a reflective silence the young man ventured the interesting conclusion, “She’s a stunning girl, all right.”  Brock looked polite askance.  “By Jove, I’m glad she isn’t my sister-in-law.”

“I suppose I’m expected to ask why,” frigidly.

“Certainly.  Because, if she was, I couldn’t.  Do you get the point?” He crossed his legs and looked insupportably sure of himself.

They reached Munich late in the afternoon and went at once to the Hotel Vier Jahretzeiten, where they were to find the Odell-Carneys.

Mr. Odell-Carney was a middle-aged Englishman of the extremely uninitiative type.  He was tall and narrow and distant, far beyond what is commonly accepted as blase; indeed, he was especially slow of speech, even for an Englishman, quite as if it were an everlasting question with him whether it was worth while to speak at all.  One had the feeling when listening to Mr. Odell-Carney that he was being favoured beyond words; it took him so long to say anything, that, if one were but moderately bright, he could finish the sentence mentally some little time in advance of the speaker, and thus be prepared to properly appreciate that which otherwise might have puzzled him considerably.  It could not be said, however, that Mr. Odell-Carney was ponderous; he was merely the effectual result of delay.  Perhaps it is safe to agree with those who knew him best; they maintained that Odell-Carney was a pose, nothing more.

His wife was quite the opposite in nearly every particular, except height and angularity.  She was bony and red-faced and opinionated.  A few sallow years with a rapid, profligate nobleman had brought her, in widowhood, to a fine sense of appreciation of the slow-going though tiresomely unpractical men of the Odell-Carney type.  It mattered little that he made poor investment of the money she had sequestered from his lordship; he had kept her in the foreground by associating himself with every big venture that interested the financial smart set.  Notwithstanding the fact that he never was known to have any money, he was looked upon as a financier of the highest order.  Which is saying a great deal in these unfeeling days of pounds and shillings.

Of course Mrs. Odell-Carney was dressed as all rangy, long-limbed Englishwomen are prone to dress,—­after a model peculiarly not her own.  She looked ridiculously ungraceful alongside the smart, chic American women, and yet not one of them but would have given her boots to be able to array herself as one of these.  There was no denying the fact that Mrs. Odell-Carney was a “regular tip-topper,” as Mr. Rodney was only too eager to say.  She had the air of a born leader; that is to say, she could be gracious when occasion demanded, without being patronising.