"For teaching Miss Letty Estcourt?"
"Pah—the salary. Love does not look at salaries."
"That sounds magnificent. Did you say love?"
"For weeks past, all the time that I have taught the niece, she has taken my flowers, my messages, at first verbal and at last written——"
"One moment. Of whom are we talking? I have met you with Miss Leech——"
"The governess? Ich danke. It is Miss Estcourt who has encouraged me and led me on, and now, after calling me her Lämmchen, takes away her niece and shuts her door in my face——"
"You have been drinking?"
"Certainly not," cried Klutz, the more indignantly because of his consciousness of the brandy.
"Then you have no excuse at all for talking in this manner of my neighbour?"
"Excuse! To hear you, one would think she must be a queen," said Klutz, laughing derisively. "If she were, I should still talk as I pleased. A cat may look at a king, I suppose?" And he laughed again, very bitterly, disliking even for one moment to imagine himself in the rôle of the cat.