“No, no, let me go,” said the young man, in a choked voice. “I shall come back to you, mother, with a ‘position.’ You will be proud of me.”
The Baroness shook her head.
“I am that already,” she said. “It is so uncomfortable here, I do not wonder you have enough of it. Otto is always ‘busy’ with ‘business,’ like a shopkeeper, and Ursula doesn’t even love him.”
“Mother!” cried Gerard.
“Not as I understand love—not as I loved your father. But, as I admitted, I no longer know. Sometimes I think I shall end like poor grandpapa, my head gets so tired; only I am still so much younger than he was, Gerard. Oh, Gerard, your father died too soon! God has been very hard on me. I never say any clever things now, as I used to do.”
In the hall, Gerard, still stunned and heart-sore, was waylaid by Tante Louisa.
“I have got a little present for you,” began that lady, in her most nervous falsetto. “It has cost me a great deal of privation, Gerard. What with the increase of expenses everywhere—I have twice already felt obliged to raise my ‘pension,’ although Otto pretends to object—I really can hardly afford it. But, then, it is a farewell gift.”
Gerard took the envelope she proffered him, gratefully, wondering whether it contained ten florins or twenty-five.
“And I should like to say, Gerard,” subjoined the Freule in a flutter, “that I highly approve of your conduct in going, and also of your fighting the German. He was insufferable. Hephzibah has told nobody but me.”
“Hephzibah,” said the Freule, in her own room. “In my youth I could have married a Prussian. We met him at Schlangenbad. But I loved my country.”