The madman had a sane enough plan up to a point—as far as Paris. There he would presumably be put away in an asylum where he would be harmless and unharmed. Not even the excitable French would do anything to injure so entertaining an eccentric. But it would be hard on the coachman to have to turn out on a night like this and drive sixteen miles at a madman’s whim. Hornblower changed his mind again. He was wondering how to decline the request without hurting the poor soul’s feelings when the door from the drawingroom opened to admit Barbara. She was tall and straight and beautiful and dignified; now that the years had made Hornblower stoopshouldered her eyes were on a level with his.

“Horatio—” she began, and then paused when she saw the stranger; but someone who knew Barbara well—Hornblower, for instance—might guess that perhaps she had not been unaware of the presence of a stranger in the diningroom before she entered, and that perhaps she had come in like this to find out what was going on. Undoubtedly she had removed her spectacles for this public appearance.

The stranger came to polite attention in the presence of a lady.

“May I have the honour of presenting my wife to Your Highness?” asked Hornblower.

The stranger made a low bow, and, advancing, took Barbara’s hand and stooped low over it again to kiss it. Hornblower watched with some little annoyance. Barbara was woman enough to be susceptible to a kiss on the hand—any rascal could find his way into her good graces if he could perform that outlandish ceremony in the right way.

“The beautiful Lady Hornblower,” said the stranger. “Wife of the most distinguished sailor in Her Majesty’s Navy, sister of the great Duke—but best known as the beautiful Lady Hornblower.”

This madman had a way with him, as well as being well informed. But the speech was thoroughly out of character, of course; Napoleon had always been notorious for his brusquerie with women, and had been said to limit his conversation with them to questions about the number of their children. But it would never occur to Barbara to think like that when such a speech had just been made to her. She turned an inquiring blue eye on her husband.