ain," announced the bride, who could not look at me
without a smile, which I altogether declined to return. But I need
hardly confess that she was right. It was from Mrs. Lascelles that I
also had heard of the dismal spot to which we were come, as her own
ultimate objective after Switzerland. It was the only address with which
she had provided the concierge at the Riffel Alp. All day I had
regretted the night wasted at Zuerich, on the chance of saving a day; but
until this moment I had been sanguine of bringing my dubious quest to a
successful issue here in Triberg. Now I was no longer even anxious to do
so. I did not desire witnesses of a meeting which might well be of a
character humiliating to myself. Still less should I have chosen for
such witnesses a couple who were plainly disposed to put the usual
misconstruction upon the relations of any man with any woman.

My disappointment was consequently less than theirs when we drove up to
as gloomy a hostelry as I have ever beheld, with the blue-black forest
smoking wet behind it, to find that here also the foul weather had
brought the season to a premature and sudden end, literally emptying
this particular hotel. Nor did the landlord give us the welcome we might
have expected on a hasty consideration of the circumstances. He said
that he had been on the point of shutting up that house until next
season and hinted at less profit than loss upon three persons only.

"But there's a fourth person coming," declared the disconsolate bride.
"We figured on finding her right here!"

"A Mrs. Lascelles," her husband explained.

"Been and gone," said the landlord, grinning sardonically. "Too lonely
for the lady. She has arrived last night, and gone away again this
morning. You will find her at the Darmstaedterhof, in Baden-Baden,
unless she changes her mind on the way."

I caught his grin. It had been the same story, at every stage of my
journey; the chances were that it would be the same thing again at
Baden-Baden. There may have been something, however, of which I was
unaware in my smile; for I found myself under close observation by the
bride; and as our eyes met her hand slipped within her husband's arm.

"I guess _we_ won't find her there," she said. "I guess we'll just light
out for ourselves, and wish the captain luck."

A stern chase is proverbially protracted, but on dry land it has usually
one end. Mine ended in Baden on the fifth (and first fine) day, rather
early