"You could not walk alone," moaned Margret.
The baroness, dumb as if her features were frozen in a mask, lay in impotent and awful silence, staring back at them.
That night Mr. Nibby formed two resolutions: one was to ask the Fräulein Rottenhöfer to marry him, and the other never to eat another of the chef's beefsteaks.
In the garden of the Hôtel des Jasmins the flowers still bloom, the palms rustle and the orange trees change their snowy blossoms to balls of gold. Madame has occasion to be dissatisfied with her celebrated artist of the kitchen. He seasons his sauces savagely with excess of fiery condiments; there is no nice discrimination exercised in his vols-au-vent; the treatment of his entrées is commonplace, not to say coarse; he has been known to burn the soup hopelessly. He no longer seeks the garden in a leisure hour of the morning, but may be seen in the twilight standing with his back to the wall, smoking a cheap cigar and staring moodily at the windows once occupied by the pretty Fräulein. He sighs profoundly.
The Baroness von Merk has been carried back to her home on the Rhine by the faithful Fritz, a helpless burden, to be disposed of according to the judgment of others. What the air-castles of the chef might have been, built out of such rainbows as the Fräulein's smiles and praises, must ever remain buried in his own bosom. Ladies have been known to condescend to those of low estate before, especially when such personal beauty as his own manly perfections were in the balance. Did the chef dream of a rival Hôtel des Jasmins, with the Fräulein as attractive landlady, while he managed the whole establishment?
Alas, poor chef! left to sigh in the shadowy garden, while a most blooming bride crosses the Atlantic with fortunate bridegroom Mr. Nibby, miraculously restored in health and spirits. The first-cabin passengers are puzzled at table by the archness with which Mrs. Nibby proffers beefsteak to her husband, and his shudder of aversion as he rejects the dish.
If it is true that one man's meat is another man's poison, may not unconscious Mr. Nibby be deemed quits with the disconsolate chef in bearing away Fräulein Rottenhöfer as his wife?
Virginia W. Johnson.