"Mrs. Rantzau, the music teacher."
"Oho! So that's the lady, is it! Well, I must say, she looks quite smart."
"When are you coming to see me?"
"My dear child, think of your reputation! What would the world say if I were to go visiting a love-lorn female without a chaperon in the world?"
"Don't talk nonsense. Come home and have dinner. I've a nice piece of fish."
"And apple sauce, what? No, thank you; I was ill for a fortnight last time I sampled your new-fangled menus. But I mustn't take up your valuable time. Addio, cara mia!"
And Vindt strode off, in time to see Hermansen and Mrs. Rantzau disappear round the corner. He began to wonder what it could mean.
Banker Hermansen running off in business hours with a lady all dressed up—this was something altogether unprecedented, and enough to set others beside Vindt agape. Hermansen, a man devoid of all tender feeling, whose heart was popularly supposed to be made of rhinoceros hide—surely he could not be going that way like any other mortal?
Vindt was so occupied with the phenomenon that he walked full tilt into Listad and the schoolmaster, the former of whom buttonholed at once and began delivering a long harangue about the new Ministry and the political situation.
"... Such a state of things, my dear sir, is more than gloomy; it is desperate. And the fons et origo of the whole trouble lies in the fact that...."