er-colored Bohemian beer; the young Bavarian officers, in light-blue
uniforms, at the next table to us--stalwart, fair-haired boys--I should
not altogether mind knowing a few of them; and, over all, the arch of
suave, dark, evening sky.

"What shall we have for supper?" cry I, vivaciously. "I never can see
anybody eating without longing to eat too. _Blutwurst!_ That means
black-pudding, I suppose--certainly not _that_--how they do call a spade
a spade in German! By-the-by, what are the soldiers having? Can you see?
I think I saw a vision of _prawns_! I saw things sticking out like their
legs. I _must_ find out!"

I rise, on pretense of getting a little wooden stool from under an
unoccupied table close to the object of my curiosity, and, as I stoop to
pick it up, I fraudulently glance over the nearest warrior's shoulder.
My sin finds me out. He turns and catches me in the act, and at the same
time a young man--_not_ a warrior, at least not in uniform, but in loose
gray British clothes--turns, too, and fixes me with a stony, British
stare. I am returning in some confusion, having moreover incidentally
discovered that they were _not_ prawns, when to my extreme surprise, I
hear my husband addressing the young gentleman in gray.

"Why, Frank, my dear boy, is that you? Who would have thought of seeing
_you_ here?"

"As to that," replies the young man, stretching out a ready right hand,
"who would have thought of seeing _you_? What on earth has brought _you_
here?"

Sir Roger laughs, but with a sort of shyness.

"Like the man in the parable, I have married a wife," he says; then,
putting his hand kindly on the young fellow's shoulder--"Nancy, you have
been wishing that we might meet some one we knew, have not you? Well,
here is some one. I suppose that I must introduce you formally to each
other. Lady Tempest--Mr. Musgrave."

Despite the searching, and, I should have thought, exhaustive
examination of my appearance, that my new friend has already indulged
in, he thinks good to look at me again, as he bows, and this time with a
sort of undisguisable surprise in his great dark eyes.

"I must apologize," he says, taking off his hat. "I had heard that you
were going to be married, but I am so behind the time, have been so out
of the way of hearing news, that I did not know that it had come off
yet."

He says this with a little of that doubtful stiffness, which sometimes
owes its birth to shyness, and sometimes to self-c