“Why, you are speaking just like one of the proclamations to the army!”
“Yet it would be frightful—poor mamma!—if anything was to happen to Gustave or Karl. Don’t let us talk about it! And so, to refresh us after all our terror, it would be good to have a gay season at a watering-place. I should prefer Carlsbad, and I went there when I was a girl, and amused myself amazingly.”
“I too went to Marienbad. It was there I made Arno’s acquaintance. But why are we sitting here idle like this? Have you no linen at hand that we could tear into charpie? I was at the Patriotic Aid Association to-day, and there came in, who do you think?”
Here I was interrupted. A footman brought in a letter.
“From Gustave,” cried Lori joyfully, as she broke the seal.
When she had read two lines she gave a shriek, the paper fell out of her hand and she threw herself on my neck.
“Lori, my poor dear, what is it?” I cried, deeply moved; “your husband?”
“O God, O God!” she groaned. “Read for yourself.”
I took the letter from the floor and began to read. I can reproduce the phraseology exactly, because afterwards I begged the letter from Lori to copy it into my diary.
“Read out loud,” she said; “I was not able to read it through.”