“By a fortunate providence for me!” exclaimed the Baron, fervently.
“Baron,” said the Countess, trying hard to look severe, “you must really keep some of these nice speeches for my daughter. Which reminds me, I wonder where she can be?”
“Ach, here she goms!” cried the Baron.
“Why, how did you know her?” asked the Countess.
“I—I did see her last night at dinnair,” explained the Baron, turning red.
“Ah, of course, I remember,” replied the Countess, in a matter-of-fact tone; but her motherly eye was sharp, and already it began to look on the highly eligible Rudolph with more approval than ever.
“My daughter Alicia, the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, Mr Bunker,” she said the next moment.
The Baron went nearly double as he bowed, and the flourish of his hat stirred the dust on the esplanade. Mr Bunker’s salutation was less profound, but his face expressed [pg 139] an almost equal degree of interested respect. Her mother thought that when one of the gentlemen was a nobleman with an indefinite number of thousands a-year and the other a person of so much discrimination, Lady Alicia’s own bow might have been a trifle less reserved. But then even the most astute mother cannot know the reasons for everything.