I
It was in the Hotel Fratazza in San Martino di Castrozza that, at the end of years, Crammon and the Countess Brainitz met again.
The countess sat on the balcony of her room, embroidering a Slavonic peasant scarf, and searching with her satisfied eyes the craggy mountains and the wooded slopes and paths. As she did so, a dust-covered motor car stopped at the entrance below, and from it stepped two ladies and two gentlemen in the fashionable swathings of motoring. The gentlemen took off their goggles, and made arrangements with the manager of the hotel.
“Look down, Stöhr,” the countess turned to her companion. “Look at that stoutish man with a face like an actor. He seems familiar to——” At that moment Crammon looked up and bowed. The countess uttered a little cry.
That evening, in the dining-hall, Crammon could not avoid going to the countess’ table and asking after her health, the length of her stay here, and similar matters. The countess rudely interrupted his courteous phrases. “Herr von Crammon, there’s something I have to say to you privately. I’m glad to have this opportunity. I have been waiting for it very long.”
“I am entirely at your service, countess,” said Crammon, with ill-concealed vexation. “I shall take the liberty of calling on you to-morrow at eleven.”
At ten minutes past eleven on the next day he had himself announced. In spite of the energetic way in which she had demanded this interview, he felt neither curiosity nor anxiety.
The countess pointed to a chair, sat down opposite her guest, and assumed the expression of a judge. “My dear sister, whom you, Herr von Crammon, cannot fail to remember, passed from this world to a better one after a long illness eighteen months ago. I was permitted to be with her to the end, and in her last hours she made a confession to me.”
The sympathy which Crammon exhibited was of such obvious superficiality that the countess added with knife-like sharpness of tone: “It was my sister Else, Herr von Crammon, the mother of Letitia. Haven’t you anything to say?”