length said.
"To-morrow we shall be with Peter Schmidt in Meriden."

But she laughed. Yes, she laughed at him, and Frederick clearly saw he
had melted her body, not her soul; or a soul was a thing this girl did
not possess.

The cab came to a halt in front of the club-house. Frederick seemed to
have lost his speech. Without saying a word, he escorted Ingigerd to the
door, pressed her hand, and returned to the cab. He chose a place at
random, and called to the coachman to drive him there.

XII

Frederick crouched in a corner of the cab. In a passion of shame, he
called himself the vilest names. He removed his slouched hat, which he
had not yet replaced by the New York chimney-pot, wiped the sweat from
his brow, and beat his fist against his forehead.

"My poor father! Within a month, I shall probably be no more nor less
than the official kept man of a prostitute. Everybody will know me and
pay homage to me. Every German barber in New York will tell his patrons
who my father is, and who I am, and what I live by, and whom I am running
after. I shall become that worthless little fiend's lap dog, her monkey
to perform tricks for her, her procurer. The German colonies in every
city, large or small, that we visit will behold in me a typical example
of the loathsome degree to which a scion of the German nobility can sink,
into what a cesspool of vice a man who was once a good man, husband, and
father can descend."

While being bowled rapidly down Broadway, Frederick, in his state of
introspection and shame, looked blindly upon the houses as they glided
by. Suddenly he started up from his crouching position. The sign of the
Hoffman House had struck his eye and recalled the appointment the men on
the _Hamburg_ had made. He consulted his watch, and found it was just
about the time they had set, between twelve and one. He called to the
driver, but before the horse could be brought to a stop, the cab had
rolled some distance beyond the hotel. Frederick got out, paid the
coachman, and in a few moments was inside the well-known New York
bar-room.

He saw a long bar, marble slabs, marble wainscoting, polished brass,
polished silver, shining mirrors, on which there was not the smallest
speck of dust, very many shining glasses, empty glasses, glasses with
straws sticking in them, and glasses partially filled with bits of ice.
Bar-keepers in spotless white linen prepared the famous American drinks,
innumerable in variety