The colonel came as gallantly up as if he had thirty pounds of trout to show instead of a creel that contained nothing but a novel by the newest and wickedest master of French fiction. He made a mild attempt to perjure himself about a large fish that had somehow got away from him, but desisted and merely added that a caning would be good for Rex. Tired he certainly was, and when he was seated on the log and Ruth was bringing him his wine, he looked sharply at her and said, “You too, Daisy; you’ve done enough for the first day. We’ll go home by the road.” “It is what I was just proposing to her,” said Rex. “Yes, you are both right,” said Ruth. “I am tired.” “And happy?” laughed Rex. But perhaps Ruth did not hear, for she spoke at the same time to her father. “Dear, you haven’t told Rex yet how you got the invitation to shoot.” “Oh, yes! It was at an officers’ dinner in Munich. The duke was there and I was introduced to him. He spoke of it as soon as they told him we were stopping here.” “He’s a brick,” said Rex, rising. “Shall we start for home, Colonel? Ruth must be tired.” When they turned in at the Forester’s door, the colonel ordered Daisy to her room, where Mrs Dene and their maid were waiting to make her luxuriously comfortable with dry things, and rugs, and couches, and cups of tea that were certainly not drawn from the Frau Förster’s stores. Tea in Germany being more awful than tobacco, or tobacco more awful than tea, according as one cares most for tea or tobacco. The colonel and Rex sat after supper under the big beech tree. Ruth, from her window, could see their cigars alight, and, now and then, hear their voices. Rex was telling the colonel about Braith, of whom he had not ceased thinking since the afternoon. He went to his room early and wrote a long letter to him. It began: “You did not expect to hear from me until I was cured. Well, you are hearing from me now, are you not?” And it ended: “Only a few more weeks, and then I shall return to you and Paris, and the dear old life. This is the middle of July. In September I shall come back.” CHAPTER XIV. After the colonel’s return, Mr Blumenthal found many difficulties in the way of that social ease which was his ideal. The ladies were never to be met with unaccompanied by the colonel or Gethryn; usually both were in attendance. If he spoke to Mrs Dene, or Ruth, it was always the colonel who answered, and there was a gleam in that trim warrior’s single eyeglass which did not harmonize with the grave politeness of his voice and manner. Rex had never taken Mr Blumenthal so seriously. He called him “Our Bowery brother,” and “the Gentleman from West Brighton,” and he passed some delightful moments in observing his gruesome familiarity with the maids, his patronage of the grave Jaegers, and his fraternal attitude toward the head of the house. It was great to see him hook a heavy arm in an arm of the tall, military Herr Förster, and to see the latter drop it.