"Most true!"
"He should not be a landed proprietor, or at least not a man who feels it a duty and an absolute necessity to live in the country and devote himself to agriculture. Best of all, he should have no definite calling, or, anyhow, only one which did not impose difficult and troublesome duties; say a position which should have it as a natural consequence that the man in question moved in the best society, and even came occasionally into pleasant contact with Court circles."
"Best of friends, how strangely skilled you are in reading a mother's heart!"
"Let me, then, look to the very bottom of it, where possibly the name of the individual in question is already written. If I read the characters correctly, they form the name ..."
"Now I am truly keen to know."
"Baron Kuno von Lotter-Vippach."
"Lydia has told you!"
"No. Neither Fräulein von Aschhof nor any one else has spoken to me, I give you my word of honour."
"But it is most strange ..."
"Why so strange? Am I not a very old friend, to whom you have many a time talked on most important topics, and whom you have many a time honoured with your most intimate confidence?"