"You are getting a trousseau for a daughter, I suppose."
"God forbid! Thank Heaven, I am unmarried. I have, out of pure goodnature, brought these things for someone else from Cologne and undertaken to pay the duty for him. It is the most convenient thing to him, though certainly not to me. But what would one not do for a compatriot. He is a Herr von Tessenau."
"Tessenau?" The name seemed familiar to Berger, but he could not remember where he had heard or read it.
"Yes, that is his name," said the captain. "He comes from Bavaria, and is said to have been in the diplomatic service. He is now living with his daughter at Oosterdaal House near Huissen, the station before Arnhem. I know both of them well, they sometimes use my boat for the journey to Arnhem, and as they are such nice people, I could not refuse them this service. The wedding, which is to take place the day after to-morrow, would otherwise have had to be postponed--ask women and lovers."
"So Fräulein von Tessenau is the happy bride?"
"The daughter of the old gentleman, yes--but she is a 'Frau,' a young widow. Her name is von Tessenau, because she was married to a cousin. It seems that she lost her husband after a brief married life, for she is still very young, scarcely twenty-two. A beautiful, gentle lady and still looks quite girlish. But I must hurry up these easy-going Mynheers."
He turned to the Customs officers and paid them the required duty. They left the steamer which now began to proceed at a much greater speed.
Notwithstanding this, Moldenhauer was pacing up and down excitedly, now and then consulting timetables and pulling out his watch every five minutes. It was another cause that robbed Berger of calm. "If it should be they?" The thought returned to him however often he might say: "Nonsense! an old father and a young daughter--the conjunction is common enough--and I know nothing else about them. That I must often have heard the name Tessenau tells rather against the supposition--for Sendlingen would hardly have chosen the name of some Austrian family for his pseudonym!"
Still his indefinite presentiment gave him no rest, and he at length went up to the captain! "I once," he began, "knew a family of von Tessenau, and would be very pleased if I were perhaps unexpectedly to come across them here. The old gentleman, you say, comes from Bavaria?"
"Yes, you must certainly be a countryman of his?"