"Regina, tell me honestly," he said, "if you haven't entirely forgotten the days when you ran wild in the village."
"Oh no, Herr; indeed I haven't," she replied, with an almost roguish smile. "For instance, I remember a great many things about the gnädiger Junker."
He withdrew far back into the shadow of the lamp-shade. "What splendid stuff she has in her!" he thought, and devoured her with his eyes. And then he made her relate all her reminiscences of him at that time. He did not appear in a very amiable light. Once he had pushed her into a duck-pond; another time sent her floating down the river in a flour-vat, till her cries of terror had brought people to the bank with life-saving apparatus; when she had on a new white frock, given her by the Castle housekeeper, he had painted her hands and face with white chalk, and told her to stand motionless like one of the statues in the Park. She had submitted meekly till the chalk got into her mouth and eyes and made them smart, and then she had burst out crying and run away.
She recalled all this with beaming eyes, as if his pranks had been a source of infinite happiness to her. Although when reminded of such and such an escapade he recollected it perfectly, he could not remember that it was Regina who had been the victim of his caprice. A sensation of shame rose within him. Instead of the dreamy, generous young cavalier he had been in the habit of picturing himself, he saw a cruel little village tyrant, who exercised his power over his small contemporaries with a relentlessness that was almost vicious.
"And did I make no amends for my wicked deeds?" he inquired, hoping to hear he had at least been capable of doing good sometimes.
"Oh, you used to give us things," she answered. "'Divide that,' you used to say, and scatter on the ground either apples and nuts, or broken tin soldiers, or a handful of counters. But, of course, the strongest and biggest got everything. Felix Merckel was the best at a scramble; the girls only had the leavings."
"And did you ever get anything from me, Regina?" he asked.
She flushed scarlet, and bowed lower over her work. "Yes, Herr, once!" she said softly.
"What was it?"
She was silent, and dared not lift her eyes.