"Why I want to know?" repeated Frau Krause, and tossed her head. "Why, because I think if Herr Guest has any friends left, they ought to know how he's going on—that's why, Fraulein!"
"How going on?" queried Madeleine with undisturbed coolness, and looked round her for a chair.
Throwing a cautious glance over her shoulder, Frau Krause said behind her hand: "It's my opinion there's a woman in the case."
"You don't need to whisper; your opinion is an open secret," answered Madeleine drily. "There is a woman, and there she sits, as you no doubt very well know." As she spoke, she pointed to a photograph of Louise, which stood on the lid of the piano.
"I thought as much," exclaimed the landlady. "I thought as much. And a bad, bold face it is, too."
"Now explain, please, what you mean by his goings on. Is he in debt to you?" Madeleine continued her interrogatory.
"Well, I can't just say that," replied the woman, with what seemed a spice of regret. "He's paid up pretty regular till now—though of course one never knows how long he'll keep on doing it. But it goes against my heart to see a young man, who might be one's own son, acting as he does. When he first came here, there wasn't a decenter young man anywhere than Herr Guest—if I had a complaint, it was that he was too much of a steady-goer. I used to tell him he ought to take more heed for his health, not to mention the ears of the people that had to live with him. He sat at that piano there all the blessed day. And now there isn't a lazier, more cantankerous fellow in the place. You can't please him anyhow. He never gives you a civil word. He doesn't work, he doesn't cat, and he's getting so thin that his clothes just hang on him."
"Is he drinking?" interrupted Madeleine in the same matter-of-fact way, with her eye on the main points of probable offence.
"Well, I can't just say that," answered Frau Krause. "Not but what it mightn't be better if he was. It's the ones as don't drink who are the hard ones to get on with, in my experience. Young gentlemen who like their liquor, are of the goodnatured, easy-going sort. Now I once had a young fellow here——"
"But I don't see in the least what you've got to complain of!" said Madeleine. "He pays you for the room, and you no doubt have free use of it.—A very good bargain!"