Frau von Sigmundskron laid her work upon her knees and looked at the young girl attentively for some seconds.
‘Was I wrong?’ Hilda asked, turning round as she felt her mother’s gaze upon her.
‘No. I do not see that it was wrong, but I think I should have acted differently. I think I would have tried to make him see—well, I never was like you.’
‘I am sorry—I would do anything to be like you, mother dear.’
‘You need not be sorry, child. You are like some one I loved better than myself—you remind me of your father. And what did Greif say to that?’
‘He refused to the very last—then he had that pain in his head and I thought he was going to die. You know the rest. O mother, what will become of him, and when shall we see him again?’
‘I do not know when we shall see him, dear, but I do not think he will be very ill. When a man has the strength to do what he has just done, and go away on foot, as he went, he is not in a dangerous state.’
Frau von Sigmundskron resumed her needlework and did not speak again for a long time. She had found time to think, and Greif’s conduct was strange in her eyes.