“Don’t look so utterly crushed,” said Cyril, giving Mansfield’s arm a gentle shake. “Didn’t I tell you how it would be?” Mansfield walked on in silence, with compressed lips. Presently they met two of the gentlemen with whom they had dined, but these were so deeply engrossed in conversation as to be unable to recognise them. Next they passed a rustic seat, behind which rose a rock bearing an inscription to the effect that the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim desired to testify to the benefit he had derived from a course of the Ludwigsbad waters. Here there sat a hideous elderly man, of generous proportions, who was laying down the laws of fashion to two or three admiring disciples, with all the confidence to be expected in the recognised arbiter of taste at the baths. He also had been one of the guests of the night before, and Mansfield had conceived an instinctive dislike to him--a dislike which was not now lessened by his putting up an eyeglass, and wondering audibly, in terms of unnecessary emphasis, “Who those fellows might be that looked like Englishmen?” “Well?” said Cyril, as they passed on; “was I a true prophet?” “Yes; oh yes. But why--what does it all mean?” “It means that they believe, or pretend to believe, that we are leagued with the Jews against them, and therefore, very naturally, they feel obliged to mark their disapproval of us.” “But will it go on? How long will they keep it up?” “Oh yes, it will go on, for exactly three days and a half. Remember that. Until then, I fear that you and I shall be confined to each other’s society. Pray talk as much as you like. I shall be delighted to listen.” “I should like to say a word or two to that fellow,” muttered Mansfield, indicating by a backward glance the oracle of fashion. “I earnestly hope you won’t. In the first place, he would not understand your German, and your righteous indignation would therefore be wasted. In the next, I would rather not kill him if I can help it.” “Kill him? how?” “With a sword, my dear youth. Excuse me, but you are really so refreshingly young. Is it beyond your powers of imagination to conceive that if you insulted him he would forthwith challenge me?” “I can look after my own quarrels, Count,” very haughtily. “In that case I should very soon have a funeral to look after in the British cemetery,” was the calm reply. “The man is a noted duellist, and you would be at his mercy in two minutes. With me as his antagonist, I will be conceited enough to say, things would be reversed. Since you are so kind as to propose to quarrel with him on my account, perhaps I may be allowed to intimate that I prefer a living secretary to a dead one.”