--"

"My lord, I have a favour to ask, perhaps, indeed in all likelihood the
last I shall ever ask of your lordship, it is this--what are you alluding
to all this while, and for what especial reason do you suggest my
immediate departure from Munich?"

"Bless my heart and soul--you surely cannot mean to carry the thing on
any further--you never can intend to assume your ministerial functions by
daylight?"

"My what!--my ministerial functions."

"Oh no, that were too much--even though his majesty did say--that you
were the most agreeable diplomate he had met for a long time."

"I, a diplomate."

"You, certainly. Surely you cannot be acting now; why, gracious mercy,
Lorrequer! can it be possible that you were not doing it by design, do
you really not know in what character you appeared last night?"

"If in any other than that of Harry Lorrequer, my lord, I pledge my
honour, I am ignorant."

"Nor the uniform you wore, don't you know what it meant?"

"The tailor sent it to my room."

"Why, man, by Jove, this will kill me," said Lord Callonby, bursting into
a fit of laughter, in which Kilkee, a hitherto silent spectator of our
colloquy, joined to such an extent, that I thought he should burst a
bloodvessel. "Why man, you went as the Charge d'Affaires."

"I, the Charge d'Affaires!"

"That you did, and a most successful debut you made of it."

While shame and confusion covered me from head to foot at the absurd and
ludicrous blunder I had been guilty of, the sense of the ridiculous was
so strong in me, that I fell upon a sofa and laughed on with the others
for full ten minutes.

"Your Excellency is, I am rejoiced to find, in good spirits," said Lady
Callonby, entering and presenting her hand.

"He is so glad to have finished the Greek Loan," said Lady Catherine,
smiling with a half malicious twinkle of the eye. Just at this instant
another door opened, and Lady Jane appeared. Luckily for me, the
increased mirth of the party, as Lord Callonby informed them of my
blunder, prevented their paying any attention to me, for as I half sprung
forward toward her, my agitation would have revealed to any observer, the
whole state of my feelings. I took her hand which she extended to me,
without speaking, and bowing deeply over it, raised my head and looked
into her eyes, as if to read at one glance, my fate, and when I let fall
her hand, I would not have exchanged my fortune for a kingdom.

"You have heard, Jane, h