A sort of pain darted through her soul; on her face there was an expression of perplexity and conflict, for she was haunted by what Pranken had said. Is this demand of Eric's what Pranken had called setting up as a pattern of honesty, and did Eric, who might know of that view, exhort her to judge impartially, whilst he laid a special emphasis on having an eye of one's own? She could not complete her sentence, for Roland came up, saying,—
"Indeed! Have you found each other out so soon?"
Manna rose hastily, and went to the villa, holding Roland by the hand.
Pranken came out with Sonnenkamp to meet them, and immediately said that he had been to church too; but he considered it a duty not to distract Manna by speaking to her in the morning.
Manna expressed her thanks.
At breakfast, Pranken had many anecdotes to relate, and he did it well, of the royal hunting-lodge, and particularly of events at Court. And he succeeded in giving a new and humorous setting out to many worn-out garrison stories, that were fresh to this circle.
"Dear child," Sonnenkamp broke in, "you have not congratulated Herr von Pranken on his appointment as chamberlain."
Manna bowed in congratulation, and Pranken referred in a cheerful way to the contrast there would be between his summer life as a husbandman, and his winter as chamberlain. He said, further, that the happiest day of his life had been the one he had spent on the island ploughing; and a single rose was the only thing that he envied, upon which glances fell that he would have liked to turn towards himself.
Manna blushed.
Pranken went on to say that the Prince would drink the waters, this summer, at Carlsbad.