"Bad is a relative idea. Melitta has given so much ground for gossip in her life that people are not so very strict with her."
"But that might be the case with Baron Oldenburg too," said Anna Maria.
"Possibly," said Hortense. "I do not know Baron Oldenburg well enough----"
The fox-hunter saw himself compelled to pull out his handkerchief, and to blow his nose furiously.
"Not well enough," repeated Hortense, who probably discovered some connection between her words and the violent blowing of her husband's nose; "but, if he can get over Melitta's last affair, he must, indeed, be very tolerant."
"Last affair!" said moral Anna Maria, raising her eyebrows; "why, I had not heard of anything!"
"Gossip, madame, gossip!" said Barnewitz, who remembered that Melitta was his first cousin, and that he had, as a boy of seventeen, worshipped the beautiful girl of twelve. "Nothing but the gossip of a set of old women."
"Old women often have very useful, sharp eyes," remarked Hortense, examining attentively the stucco ornaments of the ceiling.
"You make me very curious," said Anna Maria, sitting down comfortably in the sofa-corner.
"It is nonsense, madame, I assure you," said Barnewitz, angrily. "A couple of old women from our village, who were stealing wood at night in the Berkow forest--at least I cannot see how else they could have been there--say that Melitta has had secret interviews in her little forest cottage with--Heaven knows whom!"