He laughed uneasily.
"If my Jew friend gives me the chance, I shall make a bolt for it," he said. "It's a nuisance having all these confounded debts. I wish you weren't so stand-offish with the Bauers, Nora. If you had only sugared them a little——"
"Don't!" she interrupted almost sternly. "Your debts must be paid somehow, but not that way. Wolff must be told."
"Wolff!" He stared at her open-mouthed.
"There is nothing else to be done, unless father can help you."
"The pater won't move a finger," Miles assured her. "And if you tell your righteous husband, there will be the devil of a row."
He sat up rather abruptly as he spoke, for at that moment the study door opened, and Wolff and his visitor entered. Both men looked absorbed and tired, and Wolff's usually keen eyes had an absent expression in them, as though he were mentally engaged in some affair of importance and difficulty. His companion, however, a tall, ungainly major whom Nora had always liked because of his openly-expressed admiration for her husband's abilities, immediately assumed his manner of the gay and empty-headed cavalier.
"You must forgive my taking so much of your husband's time, gnädige Frau," he said as he kissed Nora's hand. "I had some rather stiff calculations, and I simply couldn't do them alone—you have no doubt heard what a dull person I am—so I came round to Arnim for help. There is nothing like having a clever junior, is there?"
He turned to Wolff with his easy, untroubled smile, but Wolff's face remained serious. He was buckling on his sword in preparation for departure, and appeared not to have heard his major's facetious self-depreciation.
"By the way, I have a small invitation for you, gnädige Frau," the elder officer went on. "A sort of peace-offering, as it were. My wife is driving out to see the Kaiser's review this afternoon, and asks if you would care to accompany her. If you have not seen it before it will be well worth your while to go."