Melitta shrugged her shoulders, but said nothing.
"It was in this very room," continued the baroness, taking it apparently for granted that the subject could not be in any way painful to Melitta, "that I saw Berkow the last time. I must confess that I could not overcome a slight suspicion already, on the evening on which he had that disagreeable quarrel with your cousin Barnewitz, when Baron Oldenburg tried in vain to make an end to the trying scene."
Melitta von Berkow did not seem to be specially delighted with this evidence of the admirable memory of the baroness; she became restless, and asked, apparently without knowing what she was saying:
"Have you heard from Oldenburg?"
"The baron came back a week ago."
"Oh!" cried Melitta, in a tone which made the baroness look up from her work.
"What is the matter, Melitta?"
"I am so awkward," said the latter, and pressed a tiny drop of blood from a finger of her left hand. "So Oldenburg is back again? What brings him back to us? Has he found Egypt as tiresome as our own country here?"
"The contracts with his tenants expire next November, like some of our own. I presume that was the cause of his return. He seems to have become a greater misanthrope than ever. Griebenow, one of our men, met him in the forest; he has not been here yet."
"Well, my dear Anna Maria, you will not mind, I am sure, that want of attention on his part; you never were very good friends, I believe."