ither, that the consul was obliged to protest: "If you behave in that
way, Kenton, I won't go with you. The man's perfectly innocent of your
stopping at the wrong place; and some of these hotel people know me, and
I won't stand your bullying them. And I tell you what: you've got to let
me have my laugh out, too. You know the thing's perfectly ridiculous,
and there's no use putting any other face on it." The consul did not
wait for leave to have his laugh out, but had it out in a series of
furious gusts. At last the colonel himself joined him ruefully.

"Of course," said he, "I know I'm an ass, and I wouldn't mind it on my
own account. _I_ would as soon roam round after that hotel the rest of
the night as not, but I can't help feeling anxious about my wife. I'm
afraid she'll be getting very uneasy at my being gone so long. She's all
alone, there, wherever it is, and--"

"Well, but she's got your note. She'll understand--"

"What a fool _you_ are, Davis! _There's_ my note!" cried the colonel,
opening his fist and showing a very small wad of paper in his palm.
"She'd have got my note if she'd been at the Kaiserin Elisabeth; but
she's no more there than I am."

"Oh!" said his friend, sobered at this. "To be sure! Well?"

"Well, it's no use trying to tell a man like you; but I suppose that
she's simply distracted by this time. You don't know what a woman is,
and how she can suffer about a little matter when she gives her mind to
it."

"Oh!" said the consul again, very contritely. "I'm very sorry I laughed;
but"--here he looked into the colonel's gloomy face with a countenance
contorted with agony--"this only makes it the more ridiculous, you
know;" and he reeled away, drunk with the mirth which filled him from
head to foot. But he repented again, and with a superhuman effort so far
subdued his transports as merely to quake internally, and tremble all
over, as he led the way to the next hotel, arm in arm with the
bewildered and embittered colonel. He encouraged the latter with much
genuine sympathy, and observed a proper decorum in his interviews with
one portier after another, formulating the colonel's story very neatly,
and explaining at the close that this American Herr, who had arrived at
Vienna before daylight and directed his driver to take him to the
Kaiserin Elisabeth, and had left his hotel at one o'clock in the belief
that it was the Kaiserin Elisabeth, felt now an added eagerness to know
what his hotel really