"Hold on, my excellent friend," said Niebeldingk and a great weight rolled from his heart. "You have an officer in your family? That's splendid … I couldn't ask anything better … You wire him at once and tell him that I'll be at home three days running and ready to give him the desired explanations. I'm sorry for the poor fellow for being mixed up in such a stupid mess, but I can't help him."
"Why do you feel sorry for him?" the old gentleman asked. "He's as good a marksman as you are."
"Assuredly," Niebeldingk returned. "Assuredly a better one…. Only it won't come to that."
He conducted his visitor with great ceremony into the outer hall.
The latter remained standing for a moment in the door. He grasped
Niebeldingk's hand with overflowing friendliness.
"My dear baron, you have been so nice to me and so courteous. Permit me, in return, to offer you an old man's counsel: Be more careful about flowers!"
"What flowers?"
"Well, you sent a great, costly bunch of them. That's what first attracted my sister's attention. And when my sister gets on the track of anything, well!" …
He shook with pleasure at the sly blow he had thus delivered, drew those funereal gloves of his from the crown of his hat and took his leave.
"So it was the fault of the Indian lilies," Niebeldingk thought, looking after the queer old knight with an amused imprecation. That gentleman, enlivened by the wine he had taken, pranced with a new flexibility along the side-walk. "Like the count in Don Juan," Niebeldingk thought, "only newly equipped and modernised."