A month later, the Fräulein again sat reading to the baroness, her thoughts astray and her tone of voice so monotonous that it acted soporifically on her listener. The baroness nodded in her arm-chair, with her pet poodle on her knee. The coquettish cap on her head was grotesquely crumpled, and her false front pushed awry, while the sneer on her pinched features only deepened their habitual expression of ill-nature in repose. The fat poodle blinked and the Fräulein yawned. In the large, gloomy house at Bonn was a florid portrait of the shrivelled old creature before her, there represented in slim youth, in blue velvet, with state jewels clasped about her throat. Outside, the garden still glowed with vivid patches of flowers, but the sky was dull and the piercing mistral swept clouds of dust over the boundary-wall occasionally. Again did the chef stroll down that remote path in the shrubbery, where the boundary of his dominions seemed marked by the forcing-beds of the kitchen-garden. The Fräulein's eyes sparkled with a sudden determination. She closed her book softly and glanced apprehensively at the slumbering baroness. The poodle winked one eye at her, as if perfectly comprehending the situation, and laid its nose on two little folded paws. Then she slipped noiselessly out of the room, ran down stairs, and met Mr. Nibby in the hall. He looked very ill, and shook his head in response to her inquiry concerning his health. Mr. Nibby's health could scarcely be worse, and yet he lingered at the Hôtel des Jasmins, where he constantly met Fräulein Rottenhöfer. Sympathy is the first requisite of the human heart. Such sympathy as the young German lady had unexpectedly required of the American tourist on the Cologne boat she was striving to return in another fashion. "I have a thought," she exclaimed with unusual animation of manner as she now encountered the invalid. "Will you be so kind to come in ze pavilion while I talk with ze chef?" Mr. Nibby, rather puzzled, slid into the pavilion, and the Fräulein paused in the path beyond to accost her unconscious victim. Through the mantling vines Mr. Nibby could witness the smiles this really ingenuous young creature was prepared to lavish on the susceptible chef because already aware of her power. The Fräulein's tongue ran nimbly enough in French. It was now the turn of beefsteak to be praised. Did the baroness like his beefsteak then? the chef inquired, hand on heart, large eyes darting admiring glances, and yet with a wholly inscrutable smile. The Fräulein colored slightly: her gaze sought the ground. Unquestionably, the baroness approved. The dish was always most skilfully cooked, the gravy exquisitely flavored, and the meat fibre possessed the tenderness of game, the Fräulein said. The chef, always with a sprig of parsley twirling between his fingers to assist conversation, confessed modestly that there was skill in his treatment of the prosaic beefsteak.