misfortune to arrive during a matrimonial misunderstanding.

"The baron would not give me leisure to reflect; he was so very effusive
in his greeting--not a hint of our previous meeting--unlike my hostess,
all in all to me; eager to listen, to reply; almost affectionate, full of
references to old times and genial allusions. No doubt when he chose he
could be the most charming of men; there were moments when, looking at him
in his quiet smile and restrained gesture, the almost exaggerated
politeness of his manner to his wife, whose fingers he had kissed with
pretty, old-fashioned gallantry upon his entrance, I asked myself, Could
that encounter in the passage have been a dream? Could that savage in the
sheepskin be my courteous entertainer?

"Just as I came in, did I hear my wife say there was nothing for you to do
in this place?" he said presently to me. Then, turning to her:

"You do not seem to know Mr. Marshfield. Wherever he can open his eyes
there is for him something to see which might not interest other men. He
will find things in my library which I have no notion of. He will discover
objects for scientific observation in all the members of my household, not
only in the good-looking maids--though he could, I have no doubt, tell
their points as I could those of a horse. We have maidens here of several
distinct races, Marshfield. We have also witches, and Jew leeches, and
holy daft people. In any case, Yany, with all its dependencies, material,
male and female, are at your disposal, for what you can make out of them.

"'It is good," he went on gayly, 'that you should happen to have this
happy disposition, for I fear that, no later than to-morrow, I may have to
absent myself from home. I have heard that there are news of wolves--they
threaten to be a greater pest than usual this winter, but I am going to