"I beg pardon, stay, dear Dagobert! Our English studies are not to suffer from my bad feelings, we shall have our accustomed lesson. I'll go for our books." So saying, she got up and went into the next room.
The doctor, with a vexed look, followed her with his eyes. "I never did have such a contrary patient! Always the embodiment of contradiction! Hark ye, Dagobert, you are tolerably well-informed--what sort of a man is the one hanging yonder?"
"Hanging? Whore?" asked the horror-stricken Dagobert, while, shuddering, he looked across at the trees in the park.
"Why, you need not be thinking directly of a rope," said his uncle. "I mean that picture over the desk, with the crazy decoration of crape and violets."
"It is a relative of Miss Friedberg, a cousin----"
"Yes, indeed, quite a remote one! She has told me that, too, but I know she must have been engaged to him. Tiresome enough he looks to have been. Do you know his name, perhaps?"
"Miss Friedberg told it to me once--Engelbert."
"So the man was named Engelbert, too!" cried the excited doctor. "The name is just as sentimental as that unbearable face. Engelbert and Leonie--they match splendidly together! How the two would have sat and cooed together like a pair of turtle-doves!"
"He is dead, poor man!" remarked Dagobert.
"Was not of much account in life," growled Hagenbach, "and does not seem to have had specially good nourishment either, before he hied him to the desert. What a wretched woe-begone face it is! I must away now, give my compliments to Miss Friedberg. Much satisfaction may you get out of your 'nervous' English hour."