“It seems,” replied Mr Bunker, smiling back agreeably, “that the Baron is now the showman, and I must congratulate him on his first venture.” For an instant the Countess seemed a trifle taken aback. It was a considerable number of years since she had been addressed in precisely this strain, and in fact at no time had her admirers ventured quite so dashingly to the attack. But there was something entirely irresistible in Mr Bunker’s manner, partly perhaps because he never made the mistake of heeding a first rebuff. The Countess coughed, then smiled a little again, and said to the Baron, “You didn’t tell me that your showman supplied the little speeches as well.” “I could not know it; zere has not before been ze reason for a pretty speech,” responded the Baron, gallantly. If Lady Grillyer had been anybody else, one would have said that she actually giggled. Certainly a little wave of scandalised satisfaction rippled all over her. “Oh, really!” she cried, “I don’t know which of you is the worst offender.” All this time, as may be imagined, Mr Bunker had been in a state of high mystification at his friend’s unusual adroitness. “How the deuce did he get hold of her?” he said to himself. In the next pause the Baron solved the riddle. “You vil vunder, Bonker,” he said, “how I did gom to know ze Lady Grillyer.” “I envied, certainly,” replied his friend, with a side glance at the now purring Countess. “She vas of my introdogtions, bot till after you vent out zis morning I did not lairn her name. Zen I said to myself, ‘Ze sun shines, Himmel is kind! Here now is ze fair Lady Grillyer—my introdogtion!’ and zo zat is how, you see.” “To think of the Baron being here and our only finding each other out by chance!” said the Countess. “By a fortunate providence for me!” exclaimed the Baron, fervently. “Baron,” said the Countess, trying hard to look severe, “you must really keep some of these nice speeches for my daughter. Which reminds me, I wonder where she can be?” “Ach, here she goms!” cried the Baron. “Why, how did you know her?” asked the Countess. “I—I did see her last night at dinnair,” explained the Baron, turning red. “Ah, of course, I remember,” replied the Countess, in a matter-of-fact tone; but her motherly eye was sharp, and already it began to look on the highly eligible Rudolph with more approval than ever. “My daughter Alicia, the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, Mr Bunker,” she said the next moment. The Baron went nearly double as he bowed, and the flourish of his hat stirred the dust on the esplanade. Mr Bunker’s salutation was less profound, but his face expressed an almost equal degree of interested respect. Her mother thought that when one of the gentlemen was a nobleman with an indefinite number of thousands a-year and the other a person of so much discrimination, Lady Alicia’s own bow might have been a trifle less reserved. But then even the most astute mother cannot know the reasons for everything.