“Yes, sare,” said the concierge, “the season end suddenly mit the bad vedder at the beginning of the veek.  You know that lady?  She has been here last night; she go avay again to-day, on to Goeschenen and Zuerich.  Yes, sare, she shall be in Zuerich to-night.”

I was in Zuerich myself the night after.  I knew the hotel to go to, knew it from Mrs. Lascelles herself, whose experience of continental hotels was so pathetically extensive.  This was the best in Switzerland, so she had assured me in one of our talks:  she could never pass through Zuerich without making a night of it at the Baur au Lac.  But one night of it appeared to be enough, or so it had proved on this occasion, for again I missed her by a few hours.  I was annoyed.  I agreed with Mrs. Lascelles about this hotel.  Since I had made up my mind to overtake her first or last, it might as well have been a comfortable place like this, where there was good cooking and good music and all the comforts which I may or may not have needed, but which I was certainly beginning to desire.

What a contrast to the place at which I found myself the following night.  It was a place called Triberg, in the Black Forest, which I had never penetrated before, and certainly never shall again.  It seemed to me an uttermost end of the earth, but it was raining when I arrived, and the rain never ceased for an instant while I was there.  About a dozen hotel omnibuses met the train, from which only three passengers alighted; the other two were a young married couple at whom I would not have looked twice, though we all boarded the same lucky ’bus, had not the young man stared very hard at me.

“Captain Clephane,” said he, “I guess you’ve forgotten me; but you may remember my best gurl?”

It was our good-natured young American from the Riffel Alp, who had not only joined in the daily laugh against himself up there, but must needs raise it as soon as ever he met one of us again.  I rather think his best girl did not hear him, for she was staring through the streaming omnibus windows into an absolutely deserted country street, and I feared that her eyes would soon resemble the panes.  She brightened, however, in a very flattering way, as I thought, on finding a third soul for one or both of them to speak to, for a change.  I only wished I could have returned the compliment in my heart.

“Captain Clephane,” continued the young bridegroom, “we came down Monday last.  Say, who do you guess came down along with us?”

“A friend of yours,” prompted the bride, as I put on as blank an expression as possible.

I opened my eyes a little wider.  It seemed the only thing to do.

“Captain Clephane,” said the bridegroom, beaming all over his good-humoured face, “it was a lady named Lascelles, and it’s to her advice we owe this pleasure.  We travelled together as far as Loocerne.  We guess we’ll put salt on her at this hotel.”