While his late worshippers were trampling his memory in the mire, the Baron von Blitzenberg, deserted and dejected, his face still buried in his hands, endured the slow passage of the doleful afternoon.

Unlike the prisoner at The Lash, who, by a coincidence that happily illustrates the dispensations of Providence, was undergoing at the same moment an identical ordeal, the Baron had no optimistic, whimsical philosophy to fall back upon.

Instead, he had a most tender sense of personal dignity that had been egregiously outraged--and also a wife.

Indeed, the thought of Alicia and of Alicia's parent was alone enough to keep his head bowed down.
"Ach, zey most not know," he muttered.

"I shall give moch money--hondreds of pound--not to let zem find out.