enance good-humoured, his whole
appearance bespoke an existence free from care, nights of sound sleep,
and days of tranquil enjoyment. His face was too sleek to be very
expressive, but there was a shrewd, quick look in the eye, and I set him
down in my mind as a wealthy German merchant or manufacturer (some small
peculiarities of costume betrayed the foreigner) come to show London to
his wife--a well-favoured _Frau_, fat, fair, but some years short of
forty--who accompanied him, and who, as well as her better-half, seemed
to honour me with very particular notice. My confabulation over, I was
leaving the theatre, when a sleek soft hand was gently passed through my
arm. It was my friend the fat foreigner. I strained my eyes and my
memory, but in vain; I felt very puzzled, and doubtless looked so, for
he smiled, and advancing his head, whispered a name in my ear. It was
that of Van Haubitz.

I started, looked again, doubted, and was at last convinced. _Minus_
mustache and whisker, which were closely shaven, and half his hair, of
which the remainder was considerably grizzled; _plus_ a degree of
corpulence such as I should never have thought the slender lieutenant of
artillery capable of acquiring; his heated, sun-burnt complexion, and
dissipated look, exchanged for a fresh colour and benevolent placidity;
the Dutchman I had left on the Rhine stood beside me in the lobby of the
French theatre. I turned to the lady: she was less changed than her
companion, and now that I was upon the track, I recognised Emilie
Sendel. By this time we were in the street. Van Haubitz handed his wife
into a carriage.

"Come and sup with us," he said, "and I will explain."

I mechanically obeyed, and in less than three minutes, still tongue-tied
by astonishment, I alighted at the door of a fashionable hotel in a
street adjoining Piccadilly.

A few lines will convey to the reader the substance of the long
conversation which kept the resuscitated Dutchman and myself from our
beds for fully two hours after our unexpected meeting. I had been right
in supposing that he had thrown himself voluntarily into the river;
wrong in my belief that he meditated suicide. An excellent swimmer, he
had taken the water to get rid of his wife. He might certainly have
chosen a drier method, and have given her the slip in the night-time or
on the road; but she had shown, whenever he referred to the possibility
of their separation, such a determination to remain wit