Seeing this, I pulled myself together and proceeded briskly to my business.
"My employer will find me late, I fear, my dear baroness," I began.
"Better late than wholly unsuccessful," she rejoined, still smiling.
"Tell me, my friend, suppose you had come hither and knocked at my door ?" "Perhaps I might not have been so clumsy," I essayed.
"Confess it!" she smiled.

"Had you come here and seen the exterior only, you would have felt yourself part of a great mistake.

You would have gone away." "Perhaps not," I argued.

"I have much confidence in my chief's acquaintance with his own purposes and his own facts.

Yet I confess I should not have sought madam the baroness in this neighborhood.