"Excuse me for interrupting you. Does Herr Sonnenkamp know that you are making this confidential communication to me?"
"Good Heavens!" Pranken broke out,—"but no, I am wrong, I respect this regard to your position."
He was silent for a few minutes; it occurred to him that, instead of what he had meant to say, he might warn Eric not to have too much to do with Bella. But would not this be an insinuation against his sister? He decided to go back to his first plan, and said shortly,—
"I think I may tell you that I am almost a son of this house, Fräulein Sonnenkamp is as good as engaged to me."
"If Fräulein Sonnenkamp is like her brother, I can congratulate you heartily, I thank you for your unexpected, and as yet undeserved, confidence; may I ask why you have honored me with it?"
Pranken became more inwardly enraged, but outwardly still more flattering; he nervously worked his right hand, as if he were using a riding-whip, but he smiled very condescendingly and said,—
"I have not been mistaken in you." After a pause he continued:—"I acknowledge fully your considerateness."
He did not answer directly the question as to the cause of his confidence, and there was hardly time, for Roland now called Eric to the sitting.
"One would think ten years had passed since I left off drawing," said Bella, "you look so much older now."
Eric could not speak out his thoughts. The way in which Pranken had treated him, and the manner in which he had borne himself, disturbed him very much. He was sitting now quite still, but it seemed to him as if he were being rent asunder. He felt that there was something fundamentally false in his relations with Pranken. They were both aware of the contrast and discord which existed between them; they ought either to have been open enemies, or to have passed each other with indifference; and yet some spell seemed to draw them together, and to persuade them into apparent friendliness.