it from
his head, or he would have bereft himself of a handful or two. But
everything that language could do to ease him, language did. He must
be at home to receive his august master: etiquette demanded it
imperatively. He had no time to recover his young charge, whose
presence etiquette demanded no less imperatively. Dashed from his
height of splendid triumph, and exhausted by the fluency with which he
had dealt with the appalling situation, he sank heavily into the easy
chair, an embittered man.

He was quickly roused from his gloom by the stopping of a barouche
before the house. In it sat his august master, a splendid round figure
of a man, clad in the lightest-coloured tweeds Schweidnitz could boast,
and surmounted by the whitest of white bowlers. His large, broad,
square face ended in three well-moulded chins. In the middle of the
fine expanse of face (his was not a high forehead) was a bristling
imperial moustache, far fiercer than the baron's; above it rose a big,
thick nose. His eyes were a bright blue; and they twinkled in an
engaging fashion somewhat disappointing in a royal personage. Beside
him sat a slim, contrasting equerry.

The baron rushed forth, and after the manner of his caste, was abject
in his apologies for the absence of Prince Adalbert. . . . He had
taken every precaution. . . . All had been in vain. . . . The
infatuated unfortunate would steal away to the little she-devil-child.

"Ach, zo?" said the grand duke, who made a point of speaking English in
England; and he descended with earth-shaking majesty from the creaking
barouche.

"Ve vill go to zem," he said after testing the soil of Pyechurch with a
cautious foot to make sure that it was equal to his weight.

On the way to the sea-wall the baron poured forth his damning
indictment, disjointedly and without the fierceness of phrase and
splendour of gesture he had practised; and three times the grand duke
said, somewhat phlegmatically, the baron thought:

"Ach zo?"

They came out on to the wall just above the band of Pollyooly's
subjects, hot and excited in a game of rounders.

The quick eye of the grand duke at once espied Prince Adalbert running
to field a ball.

"Ach, he is zlimmer!" he said in a tone of satisfaction.

"Zlimmer? He is zlimmer, your Highness. Id iz zat leedle
she-devil-child. She nevare--nod nevare--leds 'im be steel. All ze
day she makes 'im roosh and roosh. He haf nevare no breath in hees
loo