"My dear boy!" she cried. "How in the world did you learn that I had come here? What do you want? Has something happened at the house?"
Her son advanced into the room with a low bow to his host. It was quite plain that, for some reason, he wished to show Herr Kreutzer every courtesy; it was plain that he had reason to suspect that, possibly, his mother had not done so and that this fact worried him.
"The butler heard you give the order to the chauffeur to drive you to Herr Kreutzer's home," he told his mother briefly. Then, turning to Herr Kreutzer, he said earnestly: "My dear sir, if my mother has said anything harsh or disagreeable to you—"
Kreutzer was astonished, but had no complaint to make. His only wish was, now, to have his opportunity to bid his girl farewell and then to go to prison, where, as quickly as was possible, he might serve out whatever sentence was imposed on him. After his release, if the sentence was not of such duration that it spanned the few short years of life remaining to him, he would once again work for his Anna and endeavor to atone to her for the misfortunes which his own incompetence, he argued, had oppressed her with.
"Your mother," he assured the youth, so that the situation might not be prolonged, "has been polite. Your mother has been most polite."
The young man, with an expression of relief upon his face, turned then, to his mother. "Tell me, mother, what has brought you here," he said.
She did not hesitate. The situation did not in the least depress her. Rather was she somewhat proud of her own part in it. "It's really painful, my dear boy," said she, "but I flatter myself that I've been quite a Sherlock Holmes. I suppose you haven't even discovered, yet, that the diamond ring is gone—is stolen."
He looked at her in sheer amazement. It was clear enough that he did not, immediately, know what she was talking of. "The ring gone? Stolen, mother?"
Suddenly he burst into a laugh—so hearty, so spontaneous, so wholly foreign in its fine expression of good-natured raillery, to the tense atmosphere of accusation on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn and supreme self-abnegation on the part of the old flute-player, which had, until this time, been vibrant in the room, that it seemed strangely, shockingly incongruous.
"John!" said his mother, in a tone of stern reproof, demanding of her son for the victim of misfortune consideration which she, herself, had scarcely shown, "you must not laugh. It is too heartless—right in this poor man's presence!"