Mary had felt herself mortally insulted long before this question came. To behave thus in her presence—to speak thus of her father in her hearing! Nevertheless she answered archly and with her sweetest smile: "On our expectations from you, Uncle Klaus!"
Klaus's astonishment was beyond all measure. She tried to moderate it before it found vent; she joked—said in English that she felt dreadfully sorry for him, as she knew what a poor man he was! But he paid no more attention to her than a bear to the twitter of birds.
Out it came at last. "It is like that scoundrel Jörgen to speculate upon me!" Marching up and down again, faster than before, he continued: "Ha, ha! I might have known it! Whenever anything goes wrong, it is I who must come to the rescue—and at this moment, too, when I am hardly earning my bread! I never knew anything so impudent in my life!" He did not see her, he did not see anything. The rich man was accustomed to give free vent to his petulance, anger, insolence. "Jörgen deserves—confound him!—that I should stop the allowance I give him! He does nothing but ask for more. And now I am to——ha, ha! It's just like him!"
Mary listened, pale as death. Never before had she been so humiliated; never had any human being treated her otherwise than with the deference paid to a privileged person.
But she did not lose her head. "I keep Father's accounts now," she said coldly; "and I see from them that there is money of his in your hands."
"Yes," said Klaus, without stopping and without looking at Mary; "oh, yes—two hundred thousand kroner or so. But if you keep the accounts, you also see that at present these investments hardly yield anything."
"It is not so bad as that," she replied.
"Well—what about them?" asked he, standing still. An idea suddenly occurred to him: "Has Jörgen asked you to sell out?"
"Jörgen has asked nothing of me," Mary said, and rose to her feet.
As she stood there tall, pale, stately, facing him so bravely, Klaus felt himself worsted. He could do nothing but stare. When she said: "I am sorry that I did not know before what kind of man you are!" all his superiority vanished. He felt stupid and helpless, unable to answer, unable even to move. He allowed her to go—the very last thing he intended!