"An unexpected pleasure, my dear Fatello," said he. "What favourable chance procures me so early a visit? You are come to breakfast, I hope. Rufini, a knife and fork for M. Fatello." "I have breakfasted, M. le Baron," replied Fatello, with a dryness amounting almost to incivility. "If my call is untimely, my business is pressing----and private," he added, with a glance at the Italian, who stood in respectful immobility behind his master's chair. "Leave the room, Rufini," said Steinfeld. The well-drilled valet bowed in silence, and glided noiselessly from the apartment. "Now then, my good friend," said the Austrian, in the same gay offhand tone as before, "I am all ear and attention. What is up? Nothing bad, I hope; nothing so serious as to spoil my appetite. I have heard a proverb condemning discourse between a full man and a hungry one." Fatello made no immediate reply. There was something very peculiar in his aspect. His lips were pale and compressed, and his brows slightly knit. He seemed constraining himself to silence until he felt he could speak calmly on a subject which roused anger and indignation in his breast. Whilst seemingly engrossed by his breakfast, Steinfeld lost not a look or motion of his visitor's, not a line of his physiognomy, or a glance of his small piercing eye. And the baron, notwithstanding his assumed careless levity of manner, did not feel altogether at his ease. "You have not turned conspirator, I hope," said he, when Fatello, after a short but awkward pause, still remained silent. "No Henri-quinquist plot, or plan to restore the glorious days of the guillotine and the Goddess of Liberty? No, no; a Crœus of your calibre, my dear Fatello, would not mix in such matters. Your plotters are hungry dogs, with more debts than ducats. Talking of hunger--I am grieved you have breakfasted. This mushroom omelet does honour to Macedoine." The baron would have talked on,--for at that moment any sort of babble seemed to him preferable to silence. But Fatello, who had not heard a word he had said, suddenly rose from his seat, rested his hands upon the table, and leaning forward, with eyes sternly fixed upon Steinfeld, uttered these remarkable words, in tones rendered harsh and grating by the effort that made them calm: "Monsieur le Baron de Steinfeld, you are courting my wife!" The most expert physiognomist would have failed to detect upon the countenance of the ex-diplomatist any other expression than one of profound astonishment, tinged by that glow of indignation an innocent man would be likely to feel at an unfounded accusation, abruptly and brutally brought. After sustaining for a few seconds Fatello's fixed and angry gaze, his features relaxed into a slightly contemptuous smile. "The jest is surely in questionable taste, my dear M. Fatello. And the severity of your countenance might alarm a man with a conscience less clear than mine."