Eric could not keep saying yes, and Frau Weidmann was exceedingly vexed.
"It always puts me out," she said, "when a healthy and wealthy girl of the middle class marries a nobleman; our good, solid, industrial acquisitions are alienated. I do not wish to say that the noble is not our friend; but he does not belong to us, he considers himself something different from us, and the fruit of our toil goes to him. A girl of the middle class, who buys a title by marriage, betrays her ancestors, and betrays us in her posterity."
Frau Weidmann spoke so excitedly and angrily, that her husband tried in vain to pacify her; he took, however, the wrong means, informing her that Herr Sonnenkamp himself wanted to receive a title.
Eric was startled to hear this matter, which had been regarded as a great secret, here spoken of so openly.
Frau Weidmann had a special dislike towards Pranken; she disliked him because he induced so many people to place good breeding, as it was termed, above plain uprightness. You could hear hundreds of persons, women as well as men, speak well of him in spite of his vicious life, because he was so well bred, as they called it.
"Suppose Manna had come here?" thought Eric to himself.
Weidmann turned to Eric with the explanation that his wife was pretty severe against Pranken, as two years ago, about the time that Eric had taken the position at Sonnenkamp's, Pranken had spent a few days at Mattenheim, and in that short time had introduced a disorderly state of things at the farm, which was not without its effects even at the present time.
CHAPTER II.
A PEBBLE ANSWERS FOR A JEWEL.
Knopf, meanwhile, talked much with Roland, and congratulated him in having a man like Eric for a teacher. Roland was as inattentive as ever, asking at last only this question,—