I turned to my father and stared him in the face.  What was he?  Were we not losing precious time in not prosecuting his suit?  I put this question to him, believing that it would sound as too remote from my thoughts to betray them.  He glanced at the roses, and answered gladly,

’Yes!—­no, no! we must have our holiday.  Mr. Peterborough is for exploring a battle-field in the neighbourhood of Munich.  He shall.  I wish him to see the Salzkammergut, and have a taste of German Court-life.  Allow me to be captain, Richie, will you?  I will show you how battles are gained and mountains are scaled.  That young Prince Otto of Eisenberg is a fine young fellow.  Those Austrian cavalry regiments are good training-schools for the carriage of a young man’s head and limbs.  I would match my boy against him in the exercises—­fencing, shooting, riding.’

‘As you did at Bath,’ said I.

He replied promptly:  ’We might give him Anna Penrhys to marry.  English wives are liked here—­adored—­if they fetch a dowry.  Concerning my suit, Richie, enough if it keeps pace with us:  and we are not going slow.  It is a thing certain.  Dettermain and Newson have repeatedly said, “Money, money!’ hand us money, and we guarantee you a public recognition.”  Money we now have.  But we cannot be in two fields at once.  Is it your desire to return to England?’

‘Not at all,’ said I, with a chill at the prospect.

‘If it is—?’ he pressed me, and relenting added:  ’I confess I enjoy this Suabian land as much as you do.  Indolence is occasionally charming.  I am at work, nevertheless.  But, Richie, determine not to think little of yourself:  there is the main point; believe me, that is half the battle.  You, sir, are one of the wealthiest gentlemen in Europe.  You are pronouncedly a gentleman.  That is what we can say of you at present, as you appear in the world’s eye.  And you are by descent illustrious.  Well, no more of that, but consider if you kneel down, who will decline to put a foot on you?  Princes have the habit, and they do it as a matter of course.  Challenge them.  And they, Richie, are particularly susceptible to pity for the misfortunes of their class—­kind, I should say, for class it is not; now I have done.  All I tell you is, I intend you, under my guidance, to be happy.’

I thought his remarks the acutest worldly wisdom I had ever heard,—­his veiled method of treating my case the shrewdest, delicatest, and most consoling, most inspiring.  It had something of the mystical power of the Oracles,—­the power which belongs to anonymous writing.  Had he disposed of my apparent rival, and exalted me to the level of a princely family, in open speech, he would have conveyed no balm to me—­I should have classed it as one confident man’s opinion.  Disguised and vague, but emphatic, and interpreted by the fine beam of his eye, it was intoxicating; and when he said subsequently, ’Our majority Burgundy was good emperor wine, Richie.  You approved it?  I laid that vintage down to give you a lesson to show you that my plans come safe to maturity,’—­I credited him with a large share of foresight, though I well knew his habit of antedating his sagacity, and could not but smile at the illustration of it.