"I said nothing," he replied.
"Heavens, Thea, you have an entire agricultural library here!" Lothar exclaimed at this moment. He was never quiet long, and while the others had been conversing he had been walking about the room on a tour of discovery in search of new books or pieces of furniture. He was now standing before a pretty open set of book-shelves, from which he took several books and brought them to the table. "Since when have you been perusing works upon drainage, irrigation, and plans for factories?" he asked, laughing, and pointing to the titles of the volumes.
Thea blushed, and piled the books together. "Don't be so rude as to disarrange my books, Lothar," she said, as she took up some to put them away again.
But Bernhard detained her. "Thea," he said, "now I understand where your 'ideas' came from. Have you really been studying all this tiresome, dry stuff, and was this what you meant the other day when you declared that you had discovered an excellent antidote for ennui?"
"Why, of course, I wanted to be able to talk about all these things with you, and to know something at least of what is absorbing your thoughts," she said, with a still brighter blush, forgetting for the moment both her guests and Frau von Wronsky, as she noted the expression of her husband's eyes. The next instant she turned away, with a laugh, to rearrange her books.
Bernhard looked after her with an emotion that he would have found it difficult to express: never had she seemed to him so enchanting, so charming, as at this moment. Lothar laughed; Lieutenant Werner looked grave, and, when Thea again joined the group around the table, gave her a glance of intense admiration.
A servant announced that tea was served in the dining-hall, and thither the party repaired.
Thea tried to lead the conversation to the Wronskys again, but Bernhard persistently changed the subject whenever they were alluded to.
"Why is it so disagreeable to him to hear that woman talked of?" Thea said to herself.
It was tolerably late when the two officers took their leave, but Thea was not at all tired, and while Bernhard accompanied them down into the hall, she fetched a large photograph book, in which were the photographs of all the landed proprietors of the neighbourhood, with their wives, and when Bernhard returned he found her lost in contemplation of Frau von Wronsky's face.