"I know I ought not, but if a husband deserts one so faithlessly, what can I do?" she said, with a very becoming little shrug of her shoulders and a captivating lift of her eyebrows.
"Ah, vat indeed? He desairves not so fair a consort."
"Excuse me, Baron," said the voice of Mr Bunker at his elbow; "if you will wait here at the door I shall send up a cab."
"Goot!" cried the Baron, "a zouzand zanks!"
"I myself," added Mr Bunker, with a profound bow to the lady, "shall say good night now. The best of luck, Baron!"
In a few minutes a hansom drove up, and the Baron, springing in beside his charge, told the man to drive to 602 Eaton Square.
"Not too qvickly!" he added, in a stage aside.
They reached Trafalgar Square, matters inside going harmoniously as a marriage bell,--almost, in fact, too much suggesting that simile.
"Why are we going down Whitehall?" the lady exclaimed, suddenly.
"I know not," replied the Baron, placidly.
The Baron, as in duty bound, asked, and the reassuring reply, "All right, sir," came back through the hole in the roof.
"I seem to know that man's voice," the lady said. "He must have driven me before."
"To me all ze English speak ze same," replied the Baron. "All bot you, my fairest, viz your sound like a--vat you call?--fiddle, is it?"
Though his charmer had serious misgivings regarding their cabman's topographical knowledge, the Baron's company proved so absorbing that it was not till they were being rapidly driven over Vauxhall Bridge that she at last took alarm. At first the Baron strove to soothe her by the most approved Teutonic blandishments, but in time he too began to feel concerned, and in a voice like thunder he repeatedly called upon the driver to stop. No reply was vouchsafed, and the pace merely grew the more reckless.
"Can't you catch the reins?" cried the lady, who had got into a terrible fright.
The Baron twice essayed the feat, but each time a heavy blow over the knuckles from the butt-end of the whip forced him to desist. The lady burst into tears. The Baron swore in five languages alternately, and still the cab pursued its headlong career through deserted midnight streets, past infrequent policemen and stray belated revellers, on into an unknown wilderness of brick.