“You’ve ... heard something about me?”
His eyes twinkled. “Tongues wag in Dorzheim.”
“May—may I come to you about it ... if things get bad?” For in spite of bravado, she was becoming apprehensive of the sly malice ever more apparent in Marianna’s conversation; of the enmity piling up against her; and of a vague, more impersonal enmity which, strangely, seemed to loom behind.
“Heaven protect me—and you too!” exclaimed Sigismund in mock horror. “And you suppose Dorzheim would regard me, me of all people, as a suitable confessor for your sins?”
It was evident that Sigismund prided himself on his reputation as a “dangerous man.”
“Where have you been this afternoon?” demanded Felix.
“To your brother’s flat. It’s—it’s—a very pretty flat, isn’t it?”
The banker grew livid. “I tell you, Fräulein Deb, he is trying to marry you for your money.”
“He did not try anything of the sort!” indignantly. “And I have no money. And your Frau Mama was there.”
“That was an arranged insult to me,” Marianna declared.