“I think it very probable,” he answered, seating himself beside Madame Rosenberg.
“And don’t you think if she took some soup she would be better?”
“Perhaps.”
“Hildegarde, I insist on your trying it—or go to bed at once. You make your head worse by sitting so close to the stove.”
Hildegarde, without speaking, moved to the vacant chair at the other side of Hamilton, and slowly and reluctantly sipped a few mouthfuls of soup.
By some singular anomaly, Hamilton found himself suddenly in remarkably high spirits—he looked at Hildegarde, and congratulating himself on being free from thraldom, gazed with a gay smile on her pale features until they were suffused with red, and great was his triumph to feel and know that there was no sympathetic blush on his own countenance. He told Madame Rosenberg of an engagement he had made with Zedwitz to accompany him to Edelhof on the following morning, to attend the marriage of his sister, and requested to have his breakfast at an early hour the next day.
“And you intend to remain away a whole fortnight! How we shall miss you!” cried Madame Rosenberg.
“You are very kind to say so,” replied Hamilton, laughing.
“And I think so too, though you seem to doubt me. You know I like you better than any of the Englishmen I have had in my house. Captain Black was not to be compared to you, nor Mr. Smith, either, although he used to tell me so often that he was noble even without a von before his name, and that he could be made a chamberlain here if he wished it, as he was related to the Duke of Buckel,[[2]] which always appeared to me such an odd name for a duke that I was half inclined to doubt there being any such person.”
[2]. Buckel means in German back, or more generally humpback. It seems that Madame Rosenberg took it in the latter sense.