"Herr Captain!"
"Herr Captain!" repeated Hugo, annoyed. "No, Ella, that is going too far. I certainly, as your brother, have a right to the 'thou' which you never refused to your cousin and childish companion, but as you, from the first day of my arrival, laid so much stress on the formal 'you,' I followed the hint you gave me. However, this 'Herr Captain' I will not stand. That is an insult against which I shall call Reinhold to my assistance. He shall tell me if I must really bear hearing myself being called 'Herr Captain' by those lips."
"Certainly not!" said Reinhold, as he turned to leave, "Ella will give up this manner of speaking to you, as well as her whole tone towards you. I have just been speaking distinctly to her about it."
He went away, and his glance ordered his wife to remain, as plainly as his voice demanded obedience. Neither escaped the Captain.
"For goodness sake, do not interfere with your husband's authority! Would you command friendliness towards me?" cried he after his brother, and turned again quickly to Ella, while he continued, gallantly, "that would be the surest way to prevent my ever finding favour in my beautiful sister-in-law's eyes. But that is not required between us, is it? You will permit me, at least, to lay the due tribute of respect at your feet, to describe to you the joyful surprise with which I received the news--"
Here Hugo stopped suddenly, and seemed to have lost his train of ideas. Ella had raised her eyes, and looked at him. It was a gleam of quiet, painful reproach, and the same reproach lay in her voice as she replied, "At least leave me in peace, Herr Captain. I thought you had amusement enough for to-day."
"I?" asked Hugo, taken aback. "What do you mean, Ella? You do not think--"
The young wife did not let him finish. "What have we done to you?" she continued, and although her voice trembled timidly at first, it gained firmness with every word. "What have we done to you that you always scoff at us, since the day of your return, when you acted a scene of repentance before my parents, until the present moment, when you make the whole house the target for your jokes? Reinhold certainly tolerates our being daily humiliated; he looks upon it as a matter of course. But I, Herr Captain--" here Ella's voice had attained perfect steadiness, "I do not consider it right that you should daily cast scorn and contempt over a house in which you, after all that has passed, have been received with the old love. If this house and family do appear so very meagre and ridiculous to you, no one invited you here. You should have remained in that world of which you are able to relate so much. My parents deserve more respect and mercy even for their weaknesses; and, although our house may be simple, it is still too good for the scoffs of an--adventurer."
She turned her back upon him, and left the room without waiting for a single word of reply. Hugo stood and gazed after her, as if one of the impossible scenes out of his own Indian stories had just been acted before him. Probably, for the first time in his life, the young sailor lost, with his presence of mind, the power of speech also.
"That was plain," said he at last, as he sat down, quite upset; but the next moment he sprang up as if electrified, and cried--