all manner of manly
conveniences. I hastily furl my green umbrella, and step in. My squire
does not follow me. I hardly notice the fact, but suppose that he is
standing outside in the sun. However, when I reissue forth, I find that
he has disappeared. I look up the street, down the street. There is no
trace of him. I walk away, feeling a little mortified. I go into a few
more shops: I dawdle over some china. Then I turn my steps homeward.

At a narrow street-corner, in the grateful shade cast by some tall
houses, I come face to face with him again.

"Did not you wonder where I had disappeared to?" he asks; "or perhaps
you never noticed that I had?"

He is panting a little, as if he had been running, or walking fast.

"I thought that most likely you had taken offense again," reply I, with
a laugh, "and that I had lost sight of you for three more days."

"I have been to the Hotel de Saxe," he replies, with a rather triumphant
smile on his handsome mustacheless lips. "I thought I would find out
about Loschwitz."

"Find out _what_?" cry I, standing still, raising my voice a little, and
growing even redder than the sun, the flies, the brown-paper parcel, and
the heavy umbrella, have already made me. "There was nothing to find
out! I wish you would leave things alone; I wish you would let me manage
my own business."

The smile disappears rather rapidly.

"You have not been telling the general," continue I, in a tone of rapid
apprehension, "that I did not want to go with him? because, if you have,
it was a great, great _mistake_."

"I told him nothing of the kind," replies Mr. Musgrave, looking, like
me, fierce, but--unlike me--cool and pale. "I was not so inventive. I
merely suggested that sunstroke would most likely be your portion if you
went now, and that it would be quite as easy, and a great deal
pleasanter, to go three hours later."

"Yes? and he said--what?"

"He was foolish enough to agree with me."

We are standing in a little quiet street, all shade and dark shops.
There are very few passers-by. I feel rather ashamed of myself, and my
angry eyes peruse the pavement. Neither does he speak. Presently I look
up at him rather shyly.

"How about the gallery? the pictures?"

"Do you wish to go there?" he asks, with rather the air of a polite
martyr. "I shall be happy to take you if you like."

"Do!" say I, heartily, "and let us try to be friends, and to spend five
minutes without quarreling!"