“You found it not?”
“No. The worst of it is, I can’t even remember what letter it began with. Sometimes I think it was M, or perhaps N, and sometimes I’m almost sure it was E. It will come to me some day, no doubt, Baron, but till it does I shall have to wander about a nameless man, looking for it. And after all, I am not without the consolations of a certain useful, workaday kind of philosophy.”
He rose from the bed and smiled humorously at his friend.
“And now, Baron,” he said, “it only remains to offer you such thanks and apologies as a lunatic may, and then clear out before the cock crows. These are my brushes, I think.”
There was still something on the Baron’s mind: he lay for a moment watching Mr Bunker collect a few odds and ends and put them rapidly into a small bag, and then blurted out suddenly, “Ze Lady Alicia—do you loff her?”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Mr Bunker, “I’d forgotten all about her. I ought to have told you that I once met her [pg 175] before, when she showed sympathy—practical sympathy, I may add—for an unfortunate gentleman in Clankwood. That’s all.”
“You do not loff her?” persisted the Baron.
“I, my dear chap? No. You are most welcome to her—and the countess.”
“Does she not loff you?”
“On my honour, no. I told her a few early reminiscences; she happened to discover they were not what is generally known as true, and took so absurd a view of the case that I doubt whether she would speak to me again if she met me. In fact, Baron, if I read the omens aright—and I’ve had some experience—you only need courage and a voice.”