And so, my friends, as it were with a wrangle ended our sojourn on British soil. I lay down my pen, and become lost in many reflections as I think of all these things. Long ago have we settled down again to our ordinary Storchwerder life, with an Emilie instead of a Clothilde in the kitchen. Long ago we paid our calls announcing to our large circle that we were back. We have taken up the threads of duty, we have resumed regulated existence; and gradually as the weeks melt into months and the influence of Storchwerder presses more heavily upon her, I have observed that my wife shows an increasing tendency once more to find her level. I need not have worried; I need not have wondered how I could bring her to reason. Storchwerder is doing it. Its atmosphere and associations are very potent. They are being, I am thankful to say, too strong for Edelgard. After a few preliminary convulsions she began to cook my meals and look after my welfare as dutifully as before, and other effects no doubt will follow. At present she is more silent than before the tour, and does not laugh as readily as she used when I chance to be in a jesting mood; also at times a British microbe that has escaped the vigilance of those beneficent little creatures Science tells us are in our blood on the alert to devour intrusive foreigners crops up and causes her to comment on my sayings and doings rather _à la_ Mrs. Menzies-Legh, but I frown her down or apply the Aunt Bockhügel, and in another few months I trust all will be exactly as it used to be. I myself am exactly as I used to be--a plain, outspoken, patriotic, Christian gentleman, going steadily along the path of duty, neither looking to the right nor to the left (if I did I should not see Frau von Eckthum for she is still in England), and using my humble abilities to do what I can for the glory of my country and my Emperor. And now having finished the narrative there is nothing more to do but to buy a red pencil and put marks on it. Many, I fear, will be those marks. Unfortunate is the fact that you cannot be sincere without at the same time being indiscreet. But I trust that what remains will be treated by my hearers with the indulgence due to a man who has only been desirous of telling the whole truth, or in other words (and which amount, I take it, to precisely the same thing) of concealing nothing. POST SCRIPTUM A terrible thing has happened. Finished a week ago and the invitations to come and listen already in the post, with the flat being cleaned in preparation and beer and sandwiches almost, as it were, on the threshold, I have been obliged to take my manuscript once more out of the locked drawer which conceals it from Edelgard’s eyes in order to record a most lamentable occurrence. My wife received a letter this morning from Mrs. Menzies-Legh informing her that Frau von Eckthum is about to be married to Jellaby.