He smiled. "Quite natural," he answered. "Why, I might have eaten you!" But in the absorption of his talk with her he had forgotten that, as he went to the door, he had seen a blue coat and brass buttons, had recognized the face of his old enemy, Moresco. Now the realization that, armed and uniformed, a minion of the forces of the city's law and order, that cheap foe was actually waiting for his little Anna—for his gentle, big-eyed, soft-voiced Anna!—came to him with a new and dreadful shock. His frame stiffened and his poor old, soft hands clenched into pathetic fists. "He shall not—" he began with a brave bluster, but then stopped, realizing his own helplessness.
"What can you do?" asked Mrs. Vanderlyn, and smiled again that twisted little smile which was her counterfeit of the sweet look of sympathy. "I am only doing what is right and what is necessary. I am, naturally, most indignant at this betrayal of my confidence. I will not interfere to save the girl from justice!"
From behind the kitchen door, at this, Herr Kreutzer thought he heard a sound as of swift breath indrawn through tight-set, angry teeth, but was not sure. It might have been his own. He was so terribly excited that he did not know. Certainly, from now, his angry breathing was quite audible. His little Anna taken to a prison! No! "She shall not be punished!" he exclaimed in wrath.
Mrs. Vanderlyn looked at him, for a second, as might one look at an unpleasant child who is a disappointment. Then she for the first time showed a little wrath towards him. Up to that moment her calm, maddening attitude of skin-deep sympathy had been unbroken. She spoke sharply, now, however, as she countered: "That will not depend on you."
"It shall depend on me!" said Kreutzer, hotly.
"There is but one thing which will lighten the severity of the bad girl's punishment," said Mrs. Vanderlyn, didactically.
"And that, Madame?"
"The immediate restitution of the ring. She is here, now, is she not?"
"Yes, she is here, but—"
The poor old man looked helplessly around him. The whole thing seemed too terrible to be believed. He wondered if some dreadful nightmare did not hold him prisoner and half expected, as he let his agonized old eyes roam round the room, to wake up, presently, and find the episode was but a dreadful dream.