Frothingham had ceased to hope, and, for lack of any other opening, was arranging to go to Chicago, there to visit his steamer friend Barney, whom he had not permitted to forget him--Barney had a marriageable daughter and was rated at eleven millions; also, Chicago was reputed to be a promising field for titled foreigners. He felt that he was neglecting business in lingering at Washington. He saw no signs, heard no news, of available rich girls or rich men’s daughters. Half a dozen questions about any girl and he would get an answer that would force him to strike her from his list--the father was opposed to large settlements; the family was opposed to international marriages; the family’s social ambitions were of the new cis-Atlantic kind; the daughter was already engaged; the mother’s aim was for princely or ducal rank. And he was kept in low spirits by the spectacle of the triumphant Rontivogli and was exasperated by Elsie’s treating him as an object of pity, a rejected and inconsolable lover.
As he sat alone in a corner of the club, staring with grim satire into the ugly face of his affairs, upon him intruded a man whom he had often described as the most viciously tiresome person he had ever met--Count Eitel zu Blickenstern. He disliked Blickenstern because he was a German; he avoided him because he was dull, because he was a chronic and ingenious borrower of small sums of money, and because every remark that seemed to him to have been intended humourously was hailed by him with a loud, mirthless laugh--the laugh of those who have no notion of wit or humour and fear their deformity will be discovered.
Frothingham had first met Blickenstern in the Riviera, where he was living on the last lees of tolerance. He would have cut him when he ran across him in New York had he not found him in high favour with the women who dominated fashionable society. They admitted Blickenstern as they admitted almost any of the few available men with no occupation but idleness. They needed escorts, attendants, fetch-and-carry men; Blickenstern was idle and willing, was big and always well-dressed, was useful to do the hard work of arranging an entertainment once it had been planned. And his noisy convulsions flattered those unaccustomed to having their jokes appreciated.