The man knew that I was right; I saw it in his face, which grew absolutely sharp and thin with alarm at being thus helplessly in my hands.
And it was high time; one minute later and my victory would at least have been doubtful. For from the garden came help for the crushed one. It was the born Kippenreiter, who came calling out to us from a distance to save her two or three peaches.
A prudent general undertakes no new battle which may jeopard an already hard-won victory. I had not quailed before the wrathful looks of the steuerrath; but at sight of the yellow teeth of the born, I felt something which I should call fear, if the respect we owe to the sex could ever allow such a feeling to enter the breast of a man.
But be that as it might; when I heard the light-brown silk dress of the gnädige rustling close at hand, I considered the moment especially suitable for hastening, as rapidly as I could with politeness, along the paths strewn with dead leaves to my office, after first casting a last impressive look upon my adversary, and saluting with a silent bow his rustling reinforcement.
Would my threat prove effective?
I had given him two days respite, so the decision under all circumstances must speedily be made.
Strange enough! I was convinced that I had acted only from the most disinterested motives, and yet my soul was filled with disquiet, and my eye and ear were on the alert for any sign that might tell me what I had to hope or to fear. The next day passed--as far as I could see, all things remained as they were; Paula's room, the same in which I had lain sick, was emptied of its furniture; I saw her easel and her portfolios of sketches carried across the hall, and gnashed my teeth to see it.
But on the following morning the superintendent came into the office with an unusually grave face, and after giving me some papers, with his hand already upon the latch, turned and said:
"Tell me, George--you are quite disinterested in the matter--have you noticed anything in my behavior, or in that of any member of my family, that could give my brother or his wife reason to suppose that they are not welcome here?"
I was drawing at the time, and had just then a very delicate bit of pen-shading to do, so I could not raise my head from the drawing-board as I answered the superintendent: