“'Coy? Jumped into the Rhine to avoid suitors'?” roared the baron, purple with rage. “Hark ye, nephew! I like not this jesting. Thou knowest I married one of the Schonberg girls, as did thy father. How 'coy' they were is neither here nor there; but mayhap WE might tell another story. Thy father, as weak a fellow as thou art where a petticoat is concerned, could not as a gentleman do other than he did. And THIS is his reward? Ach Gott! 'Coy!' And THIS, I warrant, is the way the story is delivered in Paris.” Mr. Clinch would have answered that this was the way he read it in a guidebook, but checked himself at the hopelessness of the explanation. Besides, he was on the eve of historic information; he was, as it were, interviewing the past; and, whether he would ever be able to profit by the opportunity or not, he could not bear to lose it. “And how about the Lorelei--is she, too, a fiction?” he asked glibly. “It was said,” observed the baron sardonically, “that when thou disappeared with the gamekeeper's daughter at Obercassel--Heaven knows where!--thou wast swallowed up in a whirlpool with some creature. Ach Gott! I believe it! But a truce to this balderdash. And so thou wantest to know of the 'coy' sisters of Schoenberg? Hark ye, Jann, that cousin of thine is a Schonberg. Call you her 'coy'? Did I not see thy greeting? Eh? By St. Adolph, knowing thee as she does to be robber and thief, call you her greeting 'coy'?” Furious as Mr. Clinch inwardly became under these epithets, he felt that his explanation would hardly relieve the maiden from deceit, or himself from weakness. But out of his very perplexity and turmoil a bright idea was born. He turned to the baron,-- “Then you have no faith in the Rhine legends?” The baron only replied with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders. “But what if I told you a new one?” “You?” “Yes; a part of my experience?” The baron was curious. It was early in the afternoon, just after dinner. He might be worse bored. “I've only one condition,” added Mr. Clinch: “the young lady--I mean, of course, my cousin--must hear it too.” “Oh, ay! I see. Of course--the old trick! Well, call the jade. But mark ye, Sir Nephew, no enchanted maidens and knights. Keep to thyself. Be as thou art, vagabond Jann Kolnische, knight of the road.--What ho there, scoundrels! Call the Lady Wilhemina.” It was the first time Mr. Clinch had heard his fair friend's name; but it was not, evidently, the first time she had seen him, as the very decided wink the gentle maiden dropped him testified. Nevertheless, with hands lightly clasped together, and downcast eyes, she stood before them. Mr. Clinch began. Without heeding the baron's scornful grin, he graphically described his meeting, two years before, with a Lorelei, her usual pressing invitation, and his subsequent plunge into the Rhine.