“I talk about him! What do you mean? Upon my word I don’t know how the conversation took that turn; but I am sure she knows something about him. She said ‘Eugen Courvoisier indeed!’ and laughed in a very peculiar way.”
“She is a fool. So are you if you let her talk to you about him.”
“She is no fool, and I want to talk to no one but my own Mädchen,” said he, easily; “but when a woman is talking one can’t stop one’s ears.”
Time passed. The concert with the Choral Symphony followed. Karl had had the happiness of presenting tickets to Fräulein Clara and her aunt, and of seeing them, in company with Miss Sartorius, enjoying looking at the dresses, and saying how loud the music was. His visits to Frau Steinmann continued.
“Friedel,” he remarked abruptly one day to me, as we paced down the Casernenstrasse, “I wonder who Courvoisier is!”
“You have managed to exist very comfortably for three or four years without knowing.”
“There is something behind all his secrecy about himself.”
“Fräulein Sartorius says so, I suppose,” I remarked, dryly.
“N—no; she never said so; but I think she knows it is so.”