The housekeeper disappeared.
“Fräulein looks like a dead body,” thought Miriam.
Apprehension overtook her ... “there’s going to be some silly fuss.”
“I shall speak in English, because the most that I shall say concerns the English members of this household and its heavy seriousness will be by those who are not English, sufficiently understood.”
Miriam flushed, struggling for self-possession. She determined not to listen.... “Damn ... Devil ...” she exhorted herself ... “humbugging creature ...” She felt the blood throbbing in her face and her eyes and looked at no one. She was conscious that little movements and sounds came from the Germans, but she heard nothing but Fräulein’s voice which had ceased. It had been the clear-cut low-breathing tone she used at prayers. “Oh, Lord, bother, damnation,” she reiterated in her discomfiture. The words echoing through her mind seemed to cut a way of escape....
“That dear child,” smiled Fräulein’s voice, “who has just left us, came under this roof ... nearly a year ago.
“She came, a tender girl (Mademoiselle—Mademoiselle, oh, goodness!) from the house of her pious parents, fromme Eltern, fromme Eltern.” Fräulein breathed these words slowly out and a deep sigh came from one of the Germans, “to reside with us. She came in the most perfect confidence with the aim to complete her own simple education, the pious and simple nurture of a Protestant French girl, and with the aim also to remove for a period something of the burden lying upon the shoulders of those dear parents in the upbringing of herself and her brothers and sisters.” (And then to leave home and be married—how easy, how easy!)
“Honourably—honourably she has fulfilled each and every duty laid upon her as institutrice in this establishment.
“Sufficient to indicate this fulfilment of duty is the fact that she was happy and that she made happy others——”
Fräulein’s voice dropped to its lowest note and grew fuller in tone.