"Ah! dear child," sighed the baroness, "we cannot alter these things. We are condemned all our lives long to be the slaves of our inferiors."
Herr von Walde quietly turned towards her, and his glance measured her slowly from head to foot.
"Well, why do you look at me so, my dear Rudolph?" she asked, not without a tinge of uneasiness in her tone.
"I looked to see whether you really seemed fitted to play one of those sad parts in Uncle Tom's Cabin."
"Always ridicule when I look for sympathy," rejoined the lady, endeavouring to lend a gentle, melancholy tone to her harsh voice. "I might have known it, but——" She sighed again. "We do not all possess your enviable equanimity, which is never affected by the petty annoyances and necessary evils of this life. We poor women have our miserable nerves, which make us doubly sensitive to everything that jars upon our minds. If you had seen me this morning, in what a wretched condition I was——"
"Indeed!"
"I have been tried inconceivably. Well, Miss Mertens must answer for it."
"Has she injured you?"
"What an expression! My dear Rudolph, how could a person in her situation injure me? She has vexed me,—made me exceedingly angry!"
"I am greatly pleased to see that you do not bend without a struggle to the yoke of bondage."