"Ah, the boy?" he said with a tone or disappointment in his voice. "Not you, the boy? He needs instruction?" Then he looked at her again. It was too dark for him to see the colour of her eyes. He went to the door. "Jenny," he called, only he pronounced it "Chenny"; "a lamp if you please."
"How courteous and dignified his manner is!" thought Miss Stanton, "even in the most commonplace and trivial details of life a man's breeding shows itself."
"We think the boy is a genius," she said aloud, "but his parents are very poor and cannot afford to pay for his tuition."
"It is a poor neighbourhood," said Von Barwig, "but there will be no charge. I will teach him for—for you!" He had already forgotten that he had decided to take no more pupils.
"I have taken charge of his future," said Miss Stanton pointedly; "and of course shall defray all the expense of his tuition myself. I have the consent of his parents——"
Jenny came in with a large lamp and placed it on the piano. Von Barwig could now see his visitor's face, and his heart beat rapidly.
"Tell me," he said, forcing himself to be calm, "your father and mother? Are they——?"
Miss Stanton drew herself up slightly. "I am speaking of his parents," she said.
"Yes, his parents, of course! Yes, but your father—your mother," he asked insistently. "Is she—is she—living?"
The deep earnestness and anxiety with which Von Barwig put this question made it clear to Miss Stanton that it was not merely idle curiosity that prompted him to ask, so stifling her first impulse to ignore the question altogether she replied rather abruptly: