'd unpleasant!'

My aunt Dorothy whispered in my ear: 'Yes! yes!'

'I feel tricked!' he muttered, and did not wait for me to reply before
he was again questioning my aunt Dorothy concerning Mr. Bannerbridge,
and my father as to 'that sum of money.' But his method of interrogation
was confused and pointless. The drift of it was totally obscure.

'I'm off my head to-day,' he said to Janet, with a sideshot of his eye
at my father.

'You waste time and trouble, grandada,' said she.

He vowed that he was being bewildered, bothered by us all; and I thought
I had never seen him so far below his level of energy; but I had not
seen him condescend to put himself upon a moderately fair footing with
my father. The truth was, that Janet had rigorously schooled him to
bridle his temper, and he was no match for the voluble easy man without
the freest play of his tongue.

'This prince!' he kept ejaculating.

'Won't you understand, grandada, that you relieve him, and make things
clear by going?' Janet said.

He begged her fretfully not to be impatient, and hinted that she and he
might be acting the part of dupes, and was for pursuing his inauspicious
cross-examination in spite of his blundering, and the 'Where am I now?'
which pulled him up. My father, either talking to my aunt Dorothy, to
Janet, or to me, on ephemeral topics, scarcely noticed him, except when
he was questioned, and looked secure of success in the highest degree
consistent with perfect calmness.

'So you say you tell me to go, do you?' the squire called to me. 'Be
good enough to stay here and wait. I don't see that anything's gained by
my going: it's damned hard on me, having to go to a man whose language
I don't know, and he don't know mine, on a business we're all of us in a
muddle about. I'll do it if it's right. You're sure?'

He glanced at Janet. She nodded.

I was looking for this quaint and, to me, incomprehensible interlude
to commence with the departure of the squire and Janet, when a card was
handed in by one of the hotel-waiters.

'Another prince!' cried the squire. 'These Germans seem to grow princes
like potatoes--dozens to a root! Who's the card for? Ask him to walk up.
Show him into a quiet room. Does he speak English?'

'Does Prince Hermann of--I can't pronounce the name of the place--speak
English, Harry?' Janet asked me.

'As well as you or I,' said I, losing my inattention all at once with a
mad leap of the heart.

Hermann's presenc