xcept to
put something into it, till I give you the cue."

The dinner was charming, and had suffered little or nothing from the
delay. Mrs. Kenton was in raptures with it, and after a thimbleful of
the good Hungarian wine had attuned her tongue, she began to sing the
praises of the Kaiserin Elisabeth.

"The K----" began the consul, who had hitherto guarded himself very
well. But the colonel arrested him at that letter with a terrible look.
He returned the look with a glance of intelligence, and resumed: "The
Kaiserin Elisabeth has the best cook in Vienna."

"And everybody about has such nice, honest faces," said Mrs. Kenton.
"I'm sure I couldn't have felt anxious if you hadn't come till midnight:
I knew I was perfectly secure here."

"Quite right, quite right," said the consul. "All classes of the
Viennese are so faithful. Now, I dare say you could have trusted that
driver of yours, who brought you here before daylight this morning, with
untold gold. No stranger need fear any of the tricks ordinarily
practised upon travellers in Vienna. They are a truthful, honest,
virtuous population,--like all the Germans in fact."

"There, Ned! What do you say to that, with your Black Forest nonsense?"
triumphed Mrs. Kenton.

Colonel Kenton laughed sheepishly: "Well, I take it all back, Bessie. I
wasn't quite satisfied with the appearance of the Black Forest country
when I came to it," he explained to the consul, "and Mrs. Kenton and I
had our little joke about the fraudulent nature of the Germans."

"_Our_ little joke!" retorted his wife. "I wish we were going to stay
longer in Vienna. They say you have to make bargains for everything in
Italy, and here I suppose I could shop just as at home."

"Precisely," said the consul; the Viennese shopkeepers being the most
notorious Jews in Europe.

"Oh, we can't stop longer than till the morning," remarked the colonel.
"I shall be sorry to leave Vienna and the Kaiserin Elizabeth, but we
must go."

"Better hang on awhile; you won't find many hotels like it, Kenton,"
observed his friend.

"No, I suppose not," sighed the colonel; "but I'll get the address of
their correspondent in Venice and stop there."

Thus these craven spirits combined to delude and deceive the helpless
woman of whom half an hour before they had stood in such abject terror.
If they had found her in hysterics they would have pitied and respected
her; but her good sense, her amiability, and noble self-control