Frau von Arnim smiled.
"You have a bad memory in so far as it retains foolish remarks, better forgotten," she said. "I am sure I shall be very happy in our new home, and in any case, I, too, have my pleasure from our 'plot.' I have just been reckoning that if we are careful we shall be able to allow them at least 1,000 marks more next year, and that will make all the difference in the world to them. They will not have to worry so much over their pfennige at any rate."
"If only Wolff will accept it!" Hildegarde said doubtfully. "He is like the rest of us all; and if he thinks, as I suppose he must, that we are giving up anything, he will call it a sacrifice and will refuse to accept it."
"He will do just what I tell him!" Frau von Arnim retorted, with a touch of half-laughing authority, which threw a sidelight on her conscious power over her entourage. "He will let me humbug him because there will be nothing else for him to do. I shall say that we have come to Berlin to be near them—which is true; that we prefer the quiet quarters—which is partly true; that we are doing our best to spend our money, but that, do what we will, there is always a trouble—some 1,000 marks over, which won't be got rid of—which is not true at all. I shall offer it him as an indirect present to Nora, and Nora will secretly spend it on his dinners, and both will be all the happier; you need not be afraid."
Hildegarde's eyes flashed with amusement. She loved her mother in her triumphant, self-confident moods.
"I do not think I was afraid—really," she said. "I know by experience that you can twist most people round your finger. And Wolff is no exception."
She smiled to herself, and there was something wistful in her expression which Frau von Arnim was quick to perceive. She bent lower as though she wished to catch and interpret every shadow that crossed her daughter's face.
"And you will be glad to see them again, Hildegarde? You are strong enough? It will not make you unhappy?"
Hildegarde shook her head.
"It is true when I say that I am longing to see them," she said firmly. "I am happier—far happier now than in the time when I knew that, crippled though I was, Wolff would have married me, that I had only to stretch out my hand, as it were, for him to take it. It was so hard not to stretch out my hand; I had to crush down my love for him, and throw scorn on myself for daring to love at all. Every day I was afraid that I might betray myself. Now it is different. I can love him openly and honestly as my brother, and Nora I can love too without bitterness or envy as the one woman who could make him happy, or who was worthy of him. So you see, dearest, everything is for the best."