Niedermeyer shrugged his shoulders.  “I never said she was a saint!”

Shrewd as I felt Niedermeyer to be, I was not prepared to take his simple word for this event, and in the evening I received a communication which fortified my doubts.  It was a note from Pickering, and it ran as follows:—­

“My Dear Friend—­I have every hope of being happy, but I am to go to Wiesbaden to learn my fate.  Madame Blumenthal goes thither this afternoon to spend a few days, and she allows me to accompany her.  Give me your good wishes; you shall hear of the result.  E. P.”

One of the diversions of Homburg for new-comers is to dine in rotation at the different tables d’hote.  It so happened that, a couple of days later, Niedermeyer took pot-luck at my hotel, and secured a seat beside my own.  As we took our places I found a letter on my plate, and, as it was postmarked Wiesbaden, I lost no time in opening it.  It contained but three lines—­

   “I am happy—­I am accepted—­an hour ago.  I can hardly believe it’s
   your poor friend
   E. P.”

I placed the note before Niedermeyer; not exactly in triumph, but with the alacrity of all felicitous confutation.  He looked at it much longer than was needful to read it, stroking down his beard gravely, and I felt it was not so easy to confute a pupil of the school of Metternich.  At last, folding the note and handing it back, “Has your friend mentioned Madame Blumenthal’s errand at Wiesbaden?” he asked.

“You look very wise.  I give it up!” said I.

“She is gone there to make the major follow her.  He went by the next train.”

“And has the major, on his side, dropped you a line?”

“He is not a letter-writer.”

“Well,” said I, pocketing my letter, “with this document in my hand I am bound to reserve my judgment.  We will have a bottle of Johannisberg, and drink to the triumph of virtue.”

For a whole week more I heard nothing from Pickering—­somewhat to my surprise, and, as the days went by, not a little to my discomposure.  I had expected that his bliss would continue to overflow in brief bulletins, and his silence was possibly an indication that it had been clouded.  At last I wrote to his hotel at Wiesbaden, but received no answer; whereupon, as my next resource, I repaired to his former lodging at Homburg, where I thought it possible he had left property which he would sooner or later send for.  There I learned that he had indeed just telegraphed from Cologne for his luggage.  To Cologne I immediately despatched a line of inquiry as to his prosperity and the cause of his silence.  The next day I received three words in answer—­a simple uncommented request that I would come to him.  I lost no time, and reached him in the course of a few hours.  It was dark when I arrived, and the city was sheeted in a cold autumnal rain.  Pickering had stumbled, with an indifference which was itself a symptom of