im
with hope and fear at the same instant. The developments of a sound may
under some circumstances prove one's salvation or destruction. He
riveted his eyes anxiously in the direction from whence the echo of a
horse's feet splashing through the mud was now drawing nearer each
second.

"If it prove the Prinz Regent himself," he said decidedly, "he must take
us in."

It proved to be, not a royal coach, but a mere ordinary cab, than which
nothing more welcome had ever crossed his vision in all his life before.
He hailed the cabman, and the cabman stopped in the greatest possible
astonishment, and was good enough to descend in the mud and open the
door. He asked no questions--cabmen never do--but took the address,
mounted to his seat, and put his horse to a rounder trot in the
direction of the city.

Rosina leaned back in her corner and shook as if she had the ague. Her
hands and feet were icy cold; Von Ibn took her hands in his and feared
that she was ill, or going to be so.

"What did make you like that?" he asked, as the wheels dashed the
mud-spatters up against the windows; "was it that I distress you, yes?"

"Yes," she sighed.

Then he kissed her hands.

"Forgive me," he said, contritely, "I have not meant it so. There in the
trees, when you were unconscious, I did not kiss you, I did not touch
even your hair,--not thirty men in all Germany had been so good as that.
You see what I try to be for you."

He was leaning over her, the blood seemed to be boiling up into her
ears. She put up her hand:

"If you speak so," she said, "I shall faint again; I get dizzy when you
talk to me in that way."

"But if I kiss you only once," he whispered.

"No--no--no," she reiterated, and raised her hand and pushed his lips
away with it.

"_En effet vous n'etes pas du tout gentille_," he cried, in violent
anger, for his moods knew no shading in their transposition from one to
another; "you are cold and without heart. How long do you think that I
stood there in the wet and hold you back from the mud, and now you will
do nothing for me; and you were quite heavy too, and--oh, _mon Dieu_!"
he exclaimed sharply, interrupting himself, "my umbrella!"

"Have you lost it?"

"Have I lost it? Naturally I have let it fall to upraise you, and now I
have leave it there."

"I will give you another," she said pacifically.

"Another," he commented scornfully; "do you think that I have no other?"
Then his weathercock cast of mind w