"With whom have I the honor?" she said.
"All on my side! Will you favor us with your company for a few moments?" said the young man, offering Mrs. Rosalie the third yet vacant chair near the little table. "My name is Albert Timm, from Grunwald. I have a letter of introduction to you from an old friend, who sends his kindest regards. May I be permitted to place the document in those beautiful hands?" And Mr. Timm handed the lady an unsealed letter, which he had drawn from a very shabby pocket-book.
Mrs. Rosalie seemed to be a little embarrassed by this communication. She cast one more searching glance at the stranger, looked all around the room to see that she was unobserved, opened the note, turned ralf-round to get the benefit of the gas-light, and read:
"Dear Rose: The bearer is a very good friend of mine, whom you can trust unconditionally. He will tell you something about that matter at Grenwitz that will make you open your eyes wide. If you and Jeremiah will help him, we can, I am sure, help a certain gentleman to his inheritance, and make a prodigious profit out of it ourselves. Good-by! I hope you are well; and I hope the same of your still warmly attached T. G."
"You know the hand-writing?" asked Mr. Timm of the good lady, who, after reading the letter twice, and folding it up carefully to put it in her pocket, had been looking at him for some time with suspicious glances.
"It seems to me the hand-writing is familiar," she said.
"Well, for the present that is the main point. As for the rest, I will tell you more at the proper time. I hope you will grant me, to-night, the favor and the honor of a confidential talk. I am sure we shall be the best friends in the world by to-morrow."
There was a confidence and self-assurance in the manner of the young man which decidedly imposed on Mrs. Rosalie, however nicer people might have been shocked by the air of vulgar impertinence with which it was flavored. She returned the familiar pressure of Timm's hand and rose, as just at that moment one of the three Hebes came to say that she was wanted at the bar.
Mr. Timm turned once more to Director Caspar Schmenckel, from Vienna, who was so drunk or so absorbed in his thoughts that he had paid little or no attention to the conversation between his friend and Mrs. Rosalie, and then he said:
"I don't see how you can be doubtful a moment. I tell you, as you were thus facing each other I was struck by the likeness, although I had little leisure at that time to make observations. I grant the accident is marvellous which has brought you together once more after so many years, at an hour and at a place where you perhaps least expected ever to meet. But what does that amount to? I have a great respect for Master Accident, for he has helped me over and over again out of many a predicament when all cleverness and wisdom were at fault. And this accident is too famous not to be something more than a mere accident. And what is the great wonder, after all? You court, twenty-two years ago, a frivolous lady, and you succeed. When the husband returns, and finds you under suspicious circumstances, you pitch him out of the window. The lady never has had but one child, and the age of that child agrees to the day. You were in St. Petersburg, you tell me, in September, eighteen hundred and twenty-five, and the prince was born in May, twenty-six ----"