Her Highness’s behaviour roughened as soon as the place was clear of company.  She spoke at my father impetuously, with manifest scorn and reproach, struck her silver-mounted stick on the carriage panels, again and again stamped her foot, lifting a most variable emphatic countenance.  Princess Ottilia tried to intercede.  The margravine clenched her hands, and, to one not understanding her speech, appeared literally to blow the little lady off with the breath of her mouth.  Her whole bearing consisted of volleys of abuse, closed by magisterial interrogations.  Temple compared her Highness’s language to the running out of Captain Welsh’s chaincable, and my father’s replies to the hauling in:  his sentences were short, they sounded like manful protestations; I barely noticed them.  Temple’s version of it went:  ’And there was your father apologizing, and the margravine rating him,’ etc.  My father, as it happened, was careful not to open his lips wide on account of the plaster, or thick coating of paint on his face.  No one would have supposed that he was burning with indignation; the fact being, that to give vent to it, he would have had to exercise his muscular strength; he was plastered and painted from head to foot.  The fixture of his wig and hat, too, constrained his skin, so that his looks were no index of his feelings.  I longed gloomily for the moment to come when he would present himself to me in his natural form.  He was not sensible of the touch of my hand, nor I of his.  There we had to stand until the voluble portion of the margravine’s anger came to an end.  She shut her eyes and bowed curtly to our salute.

‘You have seen the last of me, madam,’ my father said to her whirling carriage-wheels.

He tried to shake, and strained in his ponderous garments.  Temple gazed abashed.  I knew not how to act.  My father kept lifting his knees on the spot as if practising a walk.

The tent was in its old place covering the bronze horse.  A workman stepped ahead of us, and we all went at a strange leisurely pace down the hill through tall pinetrees to where a closed vehicle awaited us.  Here were also a couple of lackeys, who deposited my father on a bed of moss, and with much effort pulled his huge boots off, leaving him in red silk stockings.  Temple and I snatched his gauntlets; Temple fell backward, but we had no thought of laughter; people were seen approaching, and the three of us jumped into the carriage.  I had my father’s living hand in mine to squeeze; feeling him scarcely yet the living man I had sought, and with no great warmth of feeling.  His hand was very moist.  Often I said, ‘Dear father!—­Papa, I’m so glad at last,’ in answer to his short-breathed ’Richie, my little lad, my son Richmond!  You found me out; you found me!’ We were conscious that his thick case of varnished clothing was against us.  One would have fancied from his way of speaking that he suffered from asthma.  I was now gifted with a tenfold power of observation, and let nothing escape me.