“I send you one place, if you cut up; a more pleasant one, if you do not.”
“What are the two places?”
“The first I may leave to your heated imagination; the other—it is quite pretty, I assure you. Particularly in the spring, with all nature budding to increase. I own it—in the Schwarzwald, near Biberach. You know the Schwarzwald?”
“No,” Ruth said.
“Indeed; it is not so far from Losheim.”
He put a taunt into his tone—confident, mocking raillery; and Ruth knew that he had discovered her; she recognized that from the very first, probably, he had known about her and that she had never deceived him. Whether he had received information prior to her appearance that she was not to be trusted, or whether she had betrayed herself to him, she could not know; and now it scarcely mattered. The fact was that he was aware that she was not of the Germans and that he had brought her into Germany with power to punish her as might appeal to him.
“Then you do not know Lauengratz?” he went on.
“No,” Ruth said.
“You do not call me Herr Baron now, Liebchen,” he reproached, patting her face.
Ruth made no reply but the futile movement of slipping to the cushions opposite, where he permitted her to sit alone, contenting himself by leaning back and smirking at her.