mance to a number of his
younger comrades. He had gathered them around him in the tennis
courts, where he strikingly imitated Frau Stark in the role of a
tennis player. He showed how she attempted to meet the balls with a
racquet, and how she picked them up, until these young men were fairly
dying with hilarity. He was too funny, they said, and played his
improvised part really to perfection. At last, however, Borgert tired
of this "manly" sport, and his audience dropped off, one by one,
joining the dancers inside. Borgert, though, enjoying the mild night
air, lit a fresh cigar and strolled about the garden, his habitual
cat-like tread barely audible on the soft ground. Puffing the fragrant
weed, he suddenly spied, in the uncertain glimmer of the moon, the
sheen of a white summer robe.

"Oho! A little intrigue," he thought to himself. "Maybe something of
interest. Let's reconnoitre!"

He glided like a shadow among the flowering lilacs, heavy with
perfume, and when a few paces from the figure in white, crouched and
hid himself behind one of the bushes. He could not distinguish the
outlines of the two figures clearly, but he heard whispering. First,
in low tones, he made out the voice of Frau Kahle, cooing like a
turtle, and next it was the _basso profundo_ of Lieutenant Pommer,
vainly endeavoring to compress its volume into a murmur.

"Amazing! Has this coarse elephant turned into a Romeo, sighing like a
furnace?" he said to himself, and listened with all his might.

The syllables and now and then the broken words that he was able to
understand from his point of vantage seemed to afford him the greatest
delight. When the couple at last rose and disappeared down the path
leading to the side entrance of the Casino, he left his hiding-place
and slowly followed in their footsteps. An unholy smile played around
his thin lips. "Two more in my power!" he whispered.

All this time the dancers inside were devoting themselves, without
interruption, to Terpsichorean pleasures,--mostly waltzes, they being
the special delight of Frau Stark. When Borgert entered the ballroom
the band struck up the latest waltz,--"Over the Waves,"--and he
noticed Frau Stark, flaming like a peony, perspiration streaming down
her rubicund face, being handed, true to his programme, by Lieutenant
Specht to his smiling comrade, von Meckelburg. Frau Stark just took
the time to gulp a glass of lemonade, and then was off again,
breathing hard, but still