“Eh, Lorrequer, you here still?  Why, man, I thought you’d have been over the frontier early this morning?”

“Indeed, my lord, I am not exactly aware of any urgent reason for so rapid a flight.”

“You are not!  The devil, you are not.  Why, you must surely have known his majesty to be the best tempered man in his dominions then, or you would never have played off such a ruse, though I must say, there never was anything better done.  Old Heldersteen, the minister for foreign affairs, is nearly deranged this morning about it—­it seems that he was the first that fell into the trap; but seriously speaking, I think it would be better if you got away from this; the king, it is true, has behaved with the best possible good feeling; but—­”

“My lord, I have a favour to ask, perhaps, indeed in all likelihood the last I shall ever ask of your lordship, it is this—­what are you alluding to all this while, and for what especial reason do you suggest my immediate departure from Munich?”

“Bless my heart and soul—­you surely cannot mean to carry the thing on any further—­you never can intend to assume your ministerial functions by daylight?”

“My what!—­my ministerial functions.”

“Oh no, that were too much—­even though his majesty did say—­that you were the most agreeable diplomate he had met for a long time.”

“I, a diplomate.”

“You, certainly.  Surely you cannot be acting now; why, gracious mercy, Lorrequer! can it be possible that you were not doing it by design, do you really not know in what character you appeared last night?”

“If in any other than that of Harry Lorrequer, my lord, I pledge my honour, I am ignorant.”

“Nor the uniform you wore, don’t you know what it meant?”

“The tailor sent it to my room.”

“Why, man, by Jove, this will kill me,” said Lord Callonby, bursting into a fit of laughter, in which Kilkee, a hitherto silent spectator of our colloquy, joined to such an extent, that I thought he should burst a bloodvessel.  “Why man, you went as the Charge d’Affaires.”

“I, the Charge d’Affaires!”

“That you did, and a most successful debut you made of it.”

While shame and confusion covered me from head to foot at the absurd and ludicrous blunder I had been guilty of, the sense of the ridiculous was so strong in me, that I fell upon a sofa and laughed on with the others for full ten minutes.

“Your Excellency is, I am rejoiced to find, in good spirits,” said Lady Callonby, entering and presenting her hand.

“He is so glad to have finished the Greek Loan,” said Lady Catherine, smiling with a half malicious twinkle of the eye.  Just at this instant another door opened, and Lady Jane appeared.  Luckily for me, the increased mirth of the party, as Lord Callonby informed them of my blunder, prevented their paying any attention to me, for as I half sprung forward toward her, my agitation would have revealed to any observer, the whole state of my feelings.  I took her hand which she extended to me, without speaking, and bowing deeply over it, raised my head and looked into her eyes, as if to read at one glance, my fate, and when I let fall her hand, I would not have exchanged my fortune for a kingdom.