“It would have been kinder to tell me at once that I had asked too much!” she exclaimed in a voice affected by several emotions.  “I only wanted to hear you repeat his death-cry as his foes slew him, so that it might always seem more real to me.  And you snub me like this!”

The Baron threw himself upon one knee.

“Forgive me!  I did jost lose mine head mit your eyes looking so at me!  I get confused, you are so lovely!  I did not mean to snob!”

In the ardor of his penitence he discovered himself holding her hand; she no longer seemed to be recoiling; and Heaven knows what might have happened next if an ostentatious sound of whistling had not come to their rescue.

“Bot you vill forgive?” he whispered, as they sprang up from their shady seat.

“Ye-es,” she answered, just as the serene glance of Count Bunker fell humorously upon them.

“You seem to have been plucking flowers, Tulliwuddle,” he observed.

“Flowers?  Oh, no.”

The Count glanced pointedly at his soiled knee.

“Indeed!” said he.  “Don’t I see traces of a flower-bed?”

“I think I should go in,” murmured Eva, and she was gone before the Count had time to frame a compensating speech.

His friend Tulliwuddle looked at him with marked displeasure, yet seemed to find some difficulty in adequately expressing it.

“I do not care for vat you said,” he remarked stiffly.  “Nor for ze look now on your face.”

“Baron,” said the Count imperturbably, “what did you tell me the Wraith said to you—­something about ‘Beware of the ladies,’ wasn’t it?”

“You do not onderstand.  Ze ghost” (he found some difficulty in pronouncing the spirit’s chosen name) “did soppose naturally zat I vas ze real Lord Tollyvoddle, who is, as you have told me yourself, Bonker, somezing of a fast fish.  Ze varning vas to him obviously, so you should not turn it upon me.”

Bunker opened his eyes.

“A deuced ingenious argument,” he commented.  “It wouldn’t have occurred to me if you hadn’t explained.  Then you claim the privilege of wooing whom you wish?”

“Wooing!  You forget zat I am married, Bonker.”

“Oh no, I remember perfectly.”

His tone disturbed the Baron.  Taking the Count’s arm, he said to him with moving earnestness—­

“Have I not told you how constant I am—­like ze magnet and ze pole?”

“I have heard you employ the simile.”

“Ach, bot it is true!  I am inside my heart so constant as it is possible!  But I now represent Tollyvoddle, and for his sake most try to do my best.”

Again Count Bunker glanced at his knee.

“And that is your best, then?”

“Listen, Bonker, and try to onderstand—­not jost to make jokes.  It appears to me zat Miss Gallosh vill make a good vife to Tollyvoddle.  She is so fair, so amiable, and so rich.  Could he do better?  Should I not lay ze foundations of a happy marriage mit her?  Soppose ve do get her instead of Miss Maddison, eh?”