“Curious,” thought Frederick.  “This microcephalous creature thinks I am his enemy, whereas he ought to know what he owes me.  There I toiled and travailed and sweated to raise the dead.  I considered myself a highly moral instrument of Providence, and after all, I was working for nothing but the pleasure of a sleek, consequential Don Juan.”

Mrs. Liebling, who had already been in Boston and Washington, was perfectly delighted with America.

“What do you think of the New York hotels?  I am living at the Waldorf.  Aren’t they magnificent?  I have four rooms in the front.  Such quiet, such luxury, such beautiful pictures!  You feel as if you were in the Arabian Nights.  Doctor von Kammacher, you positively must go to Delmonico’s.  What has Berlin, or even Paris, to compare with it?  You can’t find a restaurant like Delmonico’s or hotels like New York hotels in Europe.”

“Possibly,” said Frederick, quite dazed.

“Have you been in the Metropolitan Opera House yet?”

Mrs. Liebling continued to put similar lively interrogations, to which she demanded small responses from Frederick, supplying most of the answers herself.

He thought of Rosa and Siegfried and had time to inspect and reinspect the signor’s brand-new patent leather shoes, the straight creases down his trousers, his watch chain, his diamond scarf pin, his monocle, his high hat, and his expensive fur coat.

“What have you got to do with our famous tenor of the Metropolitan Opera Company?” Lilienfeld asked Frederick, when he returned to the portico with a “Whew!” of relief.  Frederick did not understand, and Lilienfeld repeated the same Italian name that Mrs. Liebling had mentioned in introducing the signor to Frederick.  He was astonished that Frederick did not know what a world-renowned star this new friend of Mrs. Liebling’s was.

XIX

The meeting had so clearly put before Frederick the tragi-comedy of existence that his sense of humour was stirred and he was capable of taking the painful situation less seriously.

The cab with the ladies drove up.  Simultaneously half a dozen reporters stepped into the lobby.  Frederick, to his surprise, observed that most of them were on a rather free and easy footing with Ingigerd, and shook hands with her familiarly.  She looked very dainty and pretty.

Her rather numerous body-guard, which now included Mr. Samuelson and his assistant, were ushered into the audience chamber, a lofty wainscoted room with bay windows.  When they entered, they saw Mr. Garry’s tall figure already seated at a long table near the empty chair that the Mayor was to occupy.  He was dressed in black, almost like an English clergyman, and the theological spirit of the Puritan shone from his face.  Yet there was too much worldly acumen, too much cold determination in his impressive features for a clergyman.  He held his eye-glasses in his hand and now and then turned over the pages of his notes.  Mr. Samuelson and Mr. Lilienfeld took seats on the other side of the Mayor’s chair, without greeting him.  The rest of the space about the table was occupied by a few clerks, the reporters, and other persons interested, among whom sat Frederick, Lilienfeld’s wife, prepossessing and stately, and Ingigerd Hahlstroem, the casus belli.