“Four thousand marks is too much.”
“Not for the best.”
“My mother says——”
“Your mother hates me. She would like to see me wear cotton in a snowstorm. She would die of spite if she saw the Frau Sanitäts-Rath Maximilian Hauffe envying me my beautiful sables.”
She paused to see if her last artful thrust at his besetting weakness had at all moved her husband. He thundered, to hide his uneasiness: “I tell you, four thousand marks is too much. You are beggaring me. You!”
The woman’s eyes grew larger and brighter. She smiled at Deb, who was trying to slip from the room unperceived. “But where are you going? Felix, the child is running away because she thinks we are quarrelling.”
Felix laughed uproariously at the notion.
“I was going to lie down before supper,” Deb explained quickly. “I’m rather tired.”
“There is no couch in your room. Here, you had better to rest beside my husband. Make room for her then, clumsy bear!” She laughed a sharp little trill. “How shocked she is! Heavens, what have I asked her to do? Surely with a respectable old married man.... Come, Felix, be a little gallant. Our English Miss is afraid of you. Na, she was bold enough this afternoon, having a fine flirt with Meester von Sittart.”
“She thinks you are another jealous Huldah von Sittart, Marianna. Did that old woman make ugly grimaces at you, Fräulein Deb? We must be careful where there are handsome husbands from America. But with old Felix Koch—Come, I will be asleep, that will put you at your ease.” He rolled over with his face to the wall, and affected to snore loudly.