"One would suppose you still a child, Molly," the old lady said, indignantly. "Look at Alice; she too is betrothed, and has been so for only a few days."
Molly clasped her hands with an expression of mock horror: "Oh, yes, but heaven defend me from a lover like hers!"
"Baroness, you forget yourself!"
"Indeed I cannot help it, madame; but Alice is quite content, and Herr Elmhorst is the pink of courtesy. All that one hears is, 'Does this please you, my dear Alice?' and, 'Just as you choose, my dear Alice.' Always polite, always considerate. But if Albert should treat me with such cool deference, his manner always at the freezing-point, I should straightway send him back his ring."
Frau von Lasberg heaved a long sigh. It was plainly impossible to impress Molly with a sense of decorum, and she held her peace, whereupon the girl, forgetting all the old Baroness's admonitions, shot off like an arrow to rejoin her lover.
Meanwhile, Elmhorst had entered into conversation with Veit Gronau, who had been presented to him as to the rest as Waltenberg's private secretary, and who, true to his expressed opinion that the presence of ladies was an honour but not a pleasure, held himself aloof from them. Of course they talked of the objects about them, and Wolfgang said, pointing to the negro and the Malay, who were busy in bringing forward for closer inspection various articles indicated by their master, "Herr Waltenberg seems to prefer foreigners for servants; and you too, Herr Secretary, in spite of your name and your German tongue, appear to me more than half a foreigner."
"You are right," Gronau assented. "I have been away from Germany for twenty-five years, and never thought to see old Europe again. I met Herr Waltenberg in Australia; that black fellow there, Said, we brought back from an African tour, and we picked up Djelma only the year before last, in Ceylon, which is why he is still so stupid. We lack only a pig-tailed Chinaman and a cannibal from the South Seas to make our menagerie complete."
"There is no disputing about tastes," Elmhorst said, with a shrug; "but I am afraid that Herr Waltenberg has become so entirely estranged from his native land in all his habits of life that he will find it impossible to live here."
"We have no idea of doing so," Veit replied, with blunt frankness. "How under heaven could we ever reconcile ourselves to the dull existence led here? We shall leave Germany as soon as possible."
Involuntarily Wolfgang breathed a sigh of relief. "You appear to have no special love for your native land," he observed.