“They aren’t in America.  They’ve got a salmon river in Scotland, and they are there now.  It’s not far from my place, Hechnahoul.”

“She’s practically in your arms, then?”

“Ach.  Ze affair is easy!”

“Pipe up the clan and abduct her!”

“Approach her mit a kilt!”

But even those optimistic exhortations left the peer still melancholy.

“It sounds all very well,” said he, “but my clansmen, as you call ’em, would expect such a devil of a lot from me too.  Old Tulliwuddle spoiled them for any ordinary mortal.  He went about looking like an advertisement for whisky, and called ’em all by their beastly Gaelic names.  I have never been in Scotland in my life, and I can’t do that sort of thing.  I’d merely make a fool of myself.  If I’d had to go to America it wouldn’t have been so bad.”

At this weak-kneed confession the Baron could hardly withhold an exclamation of contempt, but Essington, with more sympathy, inquired—­

“What do you propose to do, then?”

His lordship emptied his glass.

“I wish I had your brains and your way of carrying things off, Essington!” he said, with a sigh.  “If you got a chance of showing yourself off to Miss Maddison she’d jump at you!”

A gleam, inspired and humorous, leaped into Essington’s eyes.  The Baron, whose glance happened at the moment to fall on him, bounded gleefully from his seat.

“Hoch!” he cried, “it is mine old Bonker zat I see before me!  Vat have you in your mind?”

“Sit down, my dear Baron; that lady over there thinks you are preparing to attack her.  Shall we smoke?  Try these cigars.”

Throwing the Baron a shrewd glance to calm his somewhat alarming exhilaration, their host turned with a graver air to his other guest.

“Tulliwuddle,” said he, “I should like to help you.”

“I wish to the deuce you could!”

Essington bent over the table confidentially.

“I have an idea.”

CHAPTER IV

The three heads bent forward towards a common centre—­the Baron agog with suppressed excitement, Tulliwuddle revived with curiosity and a gleam of hope, Essington impressive and cool.

“I take it,” he began, “that if Mr. Darius P. Maddison and his coveted daughter could see a little of Lord Tulliwuddle—­meet him at lunch, talk to him afterwards, for instance—­and carry away a favorable impression of the nobleman, there would not be much difficulty in subsequently arranging a marriage?”

“Oh, none,” said Tulliwuddle.  “They’d be only too keen, if they approved of me; but that’s the rub, you know.”

“So far so good.  Now it appears to me that our modest friend here somewhat underrates his own powers of fascination”

“Ach, Tollyvoddle, you do indeed,” interjected the Baron.

“But since this idea is so firmly established in his mind that it may actually prevent him from displaying himself to the greatest advantage, and since he has been good enough to declare that he would regard with complete confidence my own chances of success were I in his place, I would propose—­with all becoming diffidence—­ that I should interview the lady and her parent instead of him.”