"What a brute I must seem!" she exclaimed. "And yet I do love you, dearest. I believe I love you more than most daughters do their mothers, and I don't believe that I am really more selfish—only, I can't hide what I feel, and I feel such a lot. Are you hurt?"
Mrs. Ingestre shook her head.
"It is an old woman's privilege to pretend that she has a reason to feel bitter," she said, "but I am not in the least bitter, because, you see, I understand. I understood even before you said anything, and so I made up my mind that you should be given an alternative——"
"An alternative, mother?"
"——To staying here; and Captain Arnold."
A sudden silence fell on both. Mrs. Ingestre, under cover of the twilight, observed her daughter sharply. She saw that though Nora's face had grown grave it showed no sign of any profound feeling, and she took the quiet, undisturbed colour as an answer to a question which even she had never ventured to ask.
"And so," she went on after a moment, "I wrote to my old friend, Fräulein Müller, about you, and she answered two or three days ago, and said she knew of an excellent position as companion to a lady in Karlsburg. She thought it would suit you admirably. You would be treated as one of the family, and have plenty of time to go on with your own studies. Would you like it?"
The proposal came so suddenly, and yet in such a matter-of-fact tone, that Nora caught her breath and looked up at her mother in blank surprise.
"You mean," she began slowly, "that I should go and live in a German family?"
"Yes."