"Bo, Bo, Bo!" laughed Lydia. "Let me try." But Lydia failed too; the note was passed round the table; Otto and Agatha tried and failed; Erna passed it on to Bertram without casting one glance at it.
"Will you not try?" asked Bertram.
"No."
She uttered this so sharply that Bertram looked up terrified.
"How very unkind," said her mother.
Bertram had the same impression at first, but he knew Erna too well; there was assuredly something else going on in her mind, something which had tried to find expression in the abrupt No. She was very pale, and had pressed her teeth against her under lip, whilst her eyes looked gloomily and fixedly straight in front of her. One might have expected her to burst into a flood of tears the next moment. To turn the attention of the rest from her, and also to overcome his own feelings of uneasiness, he began once more diligently to spell away at the signature, and suddenly exclaimed--
"I have got it, I think--Volinzov--Alexandra Paulovna Volinzov!"
"Let me see, please?" exclaimed Hildegard. "Really, Volinzov; and quite plain too. How blind we have been! Dear me, Herr Baron, what is the matter with you?"
"I beg a thousand pardons," said the Baron from behind his handkerchief, which he held pressed to his face, rising from the table as he spoke, and swiftly withdrawing from the room.
Hildegard looked sadly after his retreating figure.