uite, after a tumbler of coffee with
milk, but they did not continue to brighten so much as they ought with
the cigars. "Now let us go through the facts of the case," said the
consul, and the colonel wearily reproduced his original narrative with
every possible circumstance. "But you know all about it," he concluded.
"I don't see any end of it. I don't see but I'm to spend the rest of my
life in hunting up a hotel that professes to be the Kaiserin Elisabeth,
and isn't. I never knew anything like it."

"It certainly has the charm of novelty," gloomily assented the consul:
it must be owned that his gloom was a respectful feint. "I have heard of
men running away from their hotels, but I never did hear of a hotel
running away from a man before now. Yes--hold on! I have, too. Aladdin's
palace--and with Mrs. Aladdin in it, at that! It's a parallel case."
Here he abandoned himself as usual, while Colonel Kenton viewed his
mirth with a dreary grin. When he at last caught his breath, "I beg
your pardon, I do, indeed," the consul implored. "I know just how you
feel, but of course it's coming out right. We've been to all the hotels
I know of, but there must be others. We'll get some more names and start
at once; and if the genie has dropped your hotel anywhere this side of
Africa we shall find it. If the worst comes to the worst, you can stay
at my house to-night and start new to-m--Oh, I forgot!--Mrs. Kenton!
Really, the whole thing is such an amusing muddle that I can't seem to
get over it." He looked at Kenton with tears in his eyes, but contained
himself and decorously summoned a waiter, who brought him whatever
corresponds to a city directory in Vienna. "There!" he said, when he had
copied into his note-book a number of addresses, "I don't think your
hotel will escape us this time;" and discharging his account he led the
way to the door, Colonel Kenton listlessly following.

The wretched husband was now suffering all the anguish of a just
remorse, and the heartlessness of his behavior in going off upon his own
pleasure the whole afternoon and leaving his wife alone in a strange
hotel to pass the time as she might was no less a poignant reproach,
because it seemed so inconceivable in connection with what he had
always taken to be the kindness and unselfishness of his character. We
all know the sensation; and I know none, on the whole, so disagreeable,
so little flattering, so persistent when once it has established itself
in