"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."

The intervention of the young officer placed the whole affair upon
an intelligible basis. It remained only to treat it with entire