On his return Mr Bunker found his friend wreathed in smiles and engaged in the most animated conversation with the lady, and before the last act was over, he gathered from such scraps of conversation as reached his ears that Rudolph von Blitzenberg had little to learn in one department of a nobleman’s duties. “I wonder where my husband can be,” the lady whispered. “Ach, heed him not, fair lady,” replied the Baron. “Am I not instead of a hosband?” “I’m afraid you’re a very naughty man, Baron.” “Ven I am viz you,” the gallant Baron answered, “I forget myself all bot your charms.” These advances being made in the most dulcet tones of which the nobleman was master, and accompanied by the most enamoured expression, it is not surprising that the lady permitted herself to listen to them with perhaps too ready an ear. What Mr Bunker’s arrangement with the booking clerk had been was never quite clear, but certainly the erring husband failed to make his appearance at all, and at the last fall of the curtain she was easily persuaded to let the Baron escort her home. “I know I ought not, but if a husband deserts one so faithlessly, what can I do?” she said, with a very becoming little shrug of her shoulders and a captivating lift of her eyebrows. “Ah, vat indeed? He desairves not so fair a consort.” “But won’t it be troubling you?” “Trouble? Pleasure and captivation!” “Excuse me, Baron,” said the voice of Mr Bunker at his elbow; “if you will wait here at the door I shall send up a cab.” “Goot!” cried the Baron, “a zouzand zanks!” “I myself,” added Mr Bunker, with a profound bow to the lady, “shall say good night now. The best of luck, Baron!” In a few minutes a hansom drove up, and the Baron, springing in beside his charge, told the man to drive to 602 Eaton Square. “Not too qvickly!” he added, in a stage aside. They reached Trafalgar Square, matters inside going harmoniously as a marriage bell,—almost, in fact, too much suggesting that simile. “Why are we going down Whitehall?” the lady exclaimed, suddenly. “I know not,” replied the Baron, placidly. “Ask him where he is going!” she said. The Baron, as in duty bound, asked, and the reassuring reply, “All right, sir,” came back through the hole in the roof. “I seem to know that man’s voice,” the lady said. “He must have driven me before.” “To me all ze English speak ze same,” replied the Baron. “All bot you, my fairest, viz your sound like a—vat you call?—fiddle, is it?” Though his charmer had serious misgivings regarding their cabman’s topographical knowledge, the Baron’s company proved so absorbing that it was not till they were being rapidly driven over Vauxhall Bridge that she at last took alarm. At first the Baron strove to soothe her by the most approved Teutonic blandishments, but in time he too began to feel concerned, and in a voice like thunder he repeatedly called upon the driver to stop. No reply was vouchsafed, and the pace merely grew the more reckless.