"How can I tell you," replied Berger impatiently. "I don't know them."
"Indeed?" she asked astonished. "Then I suppose you have come to buy the house?" Several people had been with that intention, she added, but Herr von Tessenau had already made it over to his son-in-law, and he to his brother, Herr Jan van der Weyden. In a fortnight they were all going to Batavia. The Housekeeper, Fräulein Brigitta, too, and the old German man-servant. "But won't you go up to the house after all?" she asked again. Before he could answer, however, she cried out: "There they come!" and flew to the window.
A carriage went by at a leisurely trot. "Do come here," cried the landlady. Berger had retired deeper into the room, but he could still plainly see his friend. Sendlingen was looking fresher and stronger than when he saw him last; but his hair had the silver-white hue of old age, although he could hardly have reached the middle of the fifties. But in the young, blooming, happy woman at his side, Berger would scarcely have recognized his once unfortunate client, if he had met her under other circumstances. She was just laughingly bending forward and straightening the tie of her husband opposite her. The stately, fair-haired man smilingly submitted to the operation.
"How happy they are!" cried the landlady. "But they deserve it. Why the carriage is stopping," she cried, bending out of the window. "What an honour, they are going to come in."
Berger turned pale. But in the next instant he breathed again: the carriage drove on. "Oh, no!" cried the landlady, "only Franz has got down! Good day!" she cried to the old man as he went by. "A glass of wine!"
"No," answered Franz. "I am only to tell you to come up to the house. But for the matter of that as I am here----"
Then Berger heard his footsteps approaching on the floor outside; the door was opened. "Well, a glass of----" he began, but the words died on his lips. Pale as death, he started back and stared at Berger as if he had seen a ghost.
"It is I, Franz," said Berger, himself very pale. "Don't be afraid--I only want----"
"You have come to warn us?" he exclaimed, trembling all over as he approached Berger. "It is all discovered, is it not?"
"No!" replied Berger. "Why, what is there to discover?"