His sweet simpleton air of profundity convulsed me.  I handed my father the letter addressed to the princess to entrust it to the charge of one of the domestics, thinking carelessly at the time that Ottilia now stood free to make appointments and receive communications, and moreover that I was too proud to condescend to subterfuge, except this minor one, in consideration for her, of making it appear that my father, and not I, was in communication with her.  My fit of laughter clung.  I dressed chuckling.  The margravine was not slow to notice and comment on my hilarious readiness.

‘Roy,’ she said, ’you have given your son spirit.  One sees he has your blood when you have been with him an hour.’

‘The season has returned, if your Highness will let it be Spring,’ said my father.

‘Far fetched!—­from the Lower Danube!’ she ejaculated in mock scorn to excite his sprightliness, and they fell upon a duologue as good as wit for the occasion.

Prince Hermann had gone.  His departure was mentioned with the ordinary commonplaces of regret.  Ottilia was unembarrassed, both in speaking of him and looking at me.  We had the Court physician and his wife at table, Chancellor von Redwitz and his daughter, and General Happenwyll, chief of the prince’s contingent, a Prussian at heart, said to be a good officer on the strength of a military book of some sort that he had full leisure to compose.  The Chancellor’s daughter and Baroness Turckems enclosed me.

I was questioned by the baroness as to the cause of my father’s unexpected return.  ‘He is generally opportune,’ she remarked.

‘He goes with me to England,’ I said.

‘Oh! he goes,’ said she; and asked why we were honoured with the presence of Mr. Peterborough that evening.  There had always been a smouldering hostility between her and my father.

To my surprise, the baroness spoke of Ottilia by her name.

’Ottilia must have mountain air.  These late hours destroy her complexion.  Active exercise by day and proper fatigue by night time—­ that is my prescription.’

‘The princess,’ I replied, envying Peterborough, who was placed on one side of her, ’will benefit, I am sure, from mountain air.  Does she read excessively?  The sea—­’

‘The sea I pronounce bad for her—­unwholesome,’ returned the baroness.  ‘It is damp.’

I laughed.

‘Damp,’ she reiterated.  ’The vapours, I am convinced, affect mind and body.  That excursion in the yacht did her infinite mischief.  The mountains restored her.  They will again, take my word for it.  Now take you my word for it, they will again.  She is not too strong in constitution, but in order to prescribe accurately one must find out whether there is seated malady.  To ride out in the night instead of reposing!  To drive on and on, and not reappear till the night of the next day—­I ask you, is it sensible?  Does it not approach mania?’