“So I perceive,” said the baron, drily, “you even look as if you did a little more,” he added, noting that Rudolph had helped himself to a second glass of brandy.
When Rudolph stood up, the baroness stopped him with a demand to know if they might expect the pleasure of his presence at dinner that night.
The young man nodded and left the room.
“A singularly altered young man,” said the baron, across to his wife, “it seems to me that the Natzelhuber has imparted some of her natural courtesy to him, and given his manners the piquant flavour of originality!”
“Oh, he is frightfully changed,” said the baroness; “and did you remark his deplorable weakness for wine?”
“Well, yes, it struck me, I confess, that he rather copiously washed down the small allowance of food he indulged in.”
“Poor boy, we must only try and keep him here now that we have him, and get up a few lively entertainments for him. That he is wretched it is easy to see. I think his recklessness comes from despair.”
The baron shrugged his shoulders. “That is always the way with well-brought-up youths,—the slightest folly plays the very mischief with their temperaments, and they are ever in extremes, whether on the path of virtue or on the more fascinating road to the dogs!”
While the easy-going ambassador was thus moralising, Rudolph was scouring Athens in search of tidings of the Selakas. Having ascertained at the Hôtel des Étrangers that they had gone out for a drive, he returned to the Embassy, borrowed one of his uncle’s horses, and was soon out upon the open road, sweeping the plain of Attica with eager glances strained in every direction for the carriage in which the father and daughter might be found.