"What do you say to that?"
The chief-engineer laughed. "Signs and wonders are to be seen! Herr Arthur begins to take an interest in matters of business! Herr Arthur desires to be acquainted with them! Such a thing has never happened before since I have known him."
"But this is not a business matter at all," said the Director irritably. "It is a mere private transaction, and I can guess how it has been. Hartmann has behaved to the lady in that delightfully amiable manner of his we know so well. I thought it was rather odd that she should send for him. Fancy him in a drawing-room, with his savage reckless ways! He is quite capable of telling her what he told me this morning in the office: he does not want any payment, and he did not risk his life for the sake of money. The lady has been indignant at his insolence and her husband also, and now there will be some nice pleasant things for me to hear from Herr Berkow, because I allowed the interview to take place."
"Well, it will be the first time Herr Arthur has ever been indignant at anything that concerns his wife," said the other indifferently, as they went down the steps. "It seems to me that the glacier-temperature about this married couple is extending gradually to all around them. You feel the ice in the air directly you come near them, does it not strike you?"
"It struck me that Lady Eugénie looked admirably handsome. She was rather cool, certainly, but still admirably handsome!"
The chief-engineer made a comic little grimace expressive of horror.
"For Heaven's sake, do not adopt Wilberg's style! You are getting on into the fifties, you know. Talking of Wilberg, he is already head over ears in romantic adoration, but I doubt whether he, or his inevitable verses, will excite much jealousy in high quarters. Herr Arthur seems as little inclined to worship his wife as she to be worshipped. Marriages of convenience are made up every day, it is true, but I can't help having a sort of feeling about this one, as if it could not take quite the usual course, as if beneath all the ice there lay something like a volcano, which will burst out one fine day with thunder and lightning, and give us a bit of an earthquake and a catastrophe on a small scale. That would certainly 'shed some poetry on the arid steppes of our everyday life,' as Wilberg would observe, supposing always the eruption spared him and his guitar. But here we are below, good night!"
CHAPTER IX.
More than a month had passed since the festivities. Herr Berkow, coming down "to surprise his children," as he said, had scarcely found the pleasure he had hoped for in his visit, which was certainly rather premature. He had gone back to the city after a few days to settle the arrears of business awaiting him there, and now he was expected to return to the château, for a second and, this time, for a longer stay.
Nothing was changed in the life of the young people; it was, if anything, more divided, colder, more "aristocratic" than at first. On both sides the end of the honeymoon was looked forward to with considerable longing; it had been arranged that they should stay in their country retreat until such time as the fine summer weather should make a longer journey desirable. They would return from their travels in the autumn, and definitively take up their residence in the capital, where their future abode had already been prepared for them by Berkow with much lavish expenditure.