elonged to the Habsburgs, and though the Habsburgs took no great pride
or pleasure in this particular unit of their wide and varied possessions,
and would gladly have exchanged him for some interesting bird or mammal
for the Schoenbrunn Park, the code of international dignity demanded that
they should display a decent solicitude for his restoration. And while
the Foreign Offices of the two countries were taking the usual steps to
secure the release of their respective subjects a further horrible
complication ensued. Clyde, following on the track of the fugitives, not
with any special desire to overtake them, but with a dim feeling that it
was expected of him, fell into the hands of the same community of
brigands. Diplomacy, while anxious to do its best for a lady in
misfortune, showed signs of becoming restive at this expansion of its
task; as a frivolous young gentleman in Downing Street remarked, "Any
husband of Mrs. Dobrinton's we shall be glad to extricate, but let us
know how many there are of them." For a woman who valued respectability
Vanessa really had no luck.

Meanwhile the situation of the captives was not free from embarrassment.
When Clyde explained to the Kurdish headmen the nature of his
relationship with the runaway couple they were gravely sympathetic, but
vetoed any idea of summary vengeance, since the Habsburgs would be sure
to insist on the delivery of Dobrinton alive, and in a reasonably
undamaged condition. They did not object to Clyde administering a
beating to his rival for half an hour every Monday and Thursday, but
Dobrinton turned such a sickly green when he heard of this arrangement
that the chief was obliged to withdraw the concession.

And so, in the cramped quarters of a mountain hut, the ill-assorted trio
watched the insufferable hours crawl slowly by. Dobrinton was too
frightened to be conversational, Vanessa was too mortified to open her
lips, and Clyde was moodily silent. The little Limberg _negociant_
plucked up heart once to give a quavering rendering of "Yip-I-Addy," but
when he reached the statement "home was never like this" Vanessa
tearfully begged him to stop. And silence fastened itself with growing
insistence on the three captives who were so tragically herded together;
thrice a day they drew near to one another to swallow the meal that had
been prepared for them, like desert beasts meeting in mute suspended
hostility at the drinking pool, and then drew back to resume