Then casting an admiring glance around her, the young girl continued:
"You were right in saying that your room was charming, Herminie. How pretty and dainty everything is! And those lovely engravings and beautiful statuettes and graceful vases filled with flowers are all so simple and inexpensive that it seems as if any one might have them, and yet nobody has, because one must have taste to select them. And when I think," added the girl, enthusiastically, "that it was by your own labour that you acquired all these pretty things, I do not wonder that you are proud and happy. How much you must have enjoyed yourself here."
"Yes, I have had a great deal of pleasure out of my home, it is true."
"But now all these pretty surroundings have lost their charm? Why, that sounds very ungrateful in you."
"No, no, this little room is still unspeakably dear to me!" exclaimed Herminie, quickly, recollecting that it was in this room that she had seen Gerald for the first time, and for the last time, too, perhaps.
Ernestine had not been able to devise any way of leading the conversation to the subject of her mother without arousing Herminie's suspicions, but now, happening to glance at the piano, she added:
"And there is the instrument you play so divinely. How much pleasure it would give me to hear you."
"Don't ask me just now, I beg of you, Ernestine. I should burst into tears at the sound of the first note. When I am sad, music always makes me weep."
"I can understand that, but you will let me hear you play and sing some day, will you not?"
"Oh, yes, I promise you that."