She looked up and pushed a curl off her forehead with damp fingers.
"I am making shirts for you, Herr," was the answer.
"So you undertake that too?"
"Who else should do it, Herr?"
A short silence; then he questioned her further.
"Who taught you all you know, Regina? Your mother?"
She shook her head. "My mother died very young, Herr. I can hardly remember her. People say my father beat her to death."
He thought of the thin pale face and tired eyelids in the picture-gallery, of which the last trace had perished in the great fire.
"Can you remember what your mother was like?" he demanded again.
"She had long black hair, and eyes like mine, at least, so I have heard people say; and I can remember her hair, for she often wrapped me in it when I was undressed. I used to sit in it as if it were a cloak, and laugh; and when father--" She stopped in sudden alarm. "But you won't care to hear more, Herr?"