“Had she brought Cara up wisely? Had she not been too indulgent?”
In the most serious contentions between them, she had frequently given way. Now Cara was full grown and talked as a woman—a woman with weighty authority. Where had she acquired her experience?—from books? Since Mrs. Hesketh’s visit, witnessing the nakedness of the land, she had kept Letty well supplied with literature, English papers, and various small matters, that made life more easy and refined. Each year she most solemnly pledged herself to pay a visit to Lucerne, and each year, the promised visit was postponed; but now an event had occurred that made her presence absolutely essential. The two young people at Les Plans had grown up under the same roof, and their mothers were secretly anxious respecting their future; Frau Hurter was particularly perturbed; gloomier, and more silent than ever; since she did not fail to note how slyly the beautiful Mitli played with, and fascinated her distracted boy. Oh, it was a cat-and-mouse affair! Fritz was crazy, he was under a witch’s spell, he could settle to nothing. If Mitli was in Lucerne, so was he; if she was at home, he hung about aimlessly, or took the girl on the lake. He had become unmanageable, idle, unfilial, ill-tempered. What would the end be,—and when?
Of late Mitli’s popularity had cooled. Jost’s wife openly hated her, and even Freda admitted that the ‘kindli’ never cared how much work she gave anyone.
One afternoon, as Frau Hurter stood in the doorway watching the young couple descending the well-beaten track, she suddenly made up her mind to speak; and walking over to where Frau Glyn sat in the shade absorbed in her lace pillow, she began:
“You see those two, meine Frau?” indicating the rapidly disappearing pair. “Your girl and my boy.”
Letty looked up, followed the direction of the speaker’s hand, and nodded and smiled—yet the air and expression of Frau Hurter was portentous.
“They have grown up together in thirteen years under the same roof—and now”—she paused, and added with a dramatic gesture—“one of them must go—and it cannot be my son.”
“Of course not,” agreed Letty, raising a bewildered face to the stern and iron-willed Frau. “But I don’t think I understand.”
“Have you then no eyes?” demanded the other in a voice vibrating with passion, “not even the mother’s eyes! My Fritz is madly—wickedly—in love with your Mitli!”
Letty gave a stifled exclamation, hastily put aside her work, and rose to her feet.