"Oh, you can have it then," said Isabel, "of course," and she looked at the Castle of Rheinfels and blushed beautifully. CHAPTER XXVIII. "There was only one thing that disappointed me," Mrs. Malt was saying at the dinner table of the Cologne hotel, "and that wasn't so much what you would call a disappointment as a surprise. White windows-blinds in a robber castle on the Rhine I did not expect to see." I slipped away before momma had time to announce and explain her disappointments, but I heard her begin. Then I felt safe, for criticism of the Rhine is absorbing matter for conversation. The steamer's custom of giving one stewed plums with chicken is an affront to civilisation to last a good twenty minutes by myself. I tried to occupy and calm Isabel's mind with it as we walked over to the station, under the twin towers of the Cathedral, but with indifferent success. To add to her agitation at this crisis of her life, the top button came off her glove, and when that happened I felt the inutility of words. We passed the policemen on the Cathedral square with affected indifference. We believed we were not liable to arrest, but policemen, when one is eloping, have a forbidding look. We refrained, by mutual arrangement, from turning once to look back for possible pursuers, but that is not a thing I would undertake to do again under similar circumstances. We even had the hardihood to buy a box of chocolates on the way, that is, Isabel bought them, while I watched current events at the confectioner's door. The station was really only about seven minutes' walk from the hotel, but it seemed an hour before I was able to point out Dicky, alert and expectant, on the edge of the platform behind the line of cabs. "So near the fulfilment of his hopes, poor fellow," I remarked. "Yes," concurred Isabel, "but do you know I almost wish he wasn't coming." "Don't tell him so, whatever you do," I exclaimed. "I know Dicky's sensitive nature, and it is just as likely as not that he would take you at your word. And I will not elope with you alone." I need not have been alarmed. Isabel had no intention of reducing the party at the last moment. I listened for protests and hesitations when they met, but all I heard was, "_Have_ you got the bag?" Dicky had the bag, the tickets, the places, everything. He had already assumed, though only a husband of to-morrow, the imperative and responsible connection with Isabel's arrangements. He told her she was to sleep with her head toward the engine, that she was to drink nothing but soda-water at any of the stations, and that she must not, on any account, leave the carriage when we changed for Paris until he came for her. It would be my business to see that these instructions were carried out. "What shall I do," I asked, "if she cries in the night?"