Both had long been up and dressed. Frau Sophie was as round as a tub. Knowing well enough that no one would search her, she had put on a dozen dresses one over the other, and hidden a few napkins and silver spoons in her pockets. She could hardly move. Timéa was in her simple black every-day dress, and was preparing warm milk and coffee. At the sight of Athalie, Frau Sophie broke into loud sobs, and hung on her neck. "Oh, my dear, darling, pretty daughter! What have we come to, and what will become of us? Oh, that we had not lived to see this day! This dreadful drum woke you, I suppose?"
"Is it not yet eight o'clock?" asked Athalie. The kitchen clock was still going.
"Not eight? Why, the auction began at nine. Can you not hear it?"
"Silly idea! Why, who should visit us at such a time?"
Athalie said no more, but sat down on the bench—the same little seat on which Frau Sophie had described to Timéa the splendid wedding ceremony.
Timéa prepared the breakfast, toasted the bread, and laid the kitchen table for the two ladies. Athalie did not heed the invitation, however much pressed by Frau Sophie. "Drink, my dear, my own pretty! Who knows where we shall get coffee to-morrow? The whole world is against us, and every one abuses and curses us. What will become of us?" But that did not hinder her from gulping down her cup of coffee. Athalie was thinking of the journey to Belgrade, and of her expected traveling companion.
Frau Sophie's mind was much occupied with original notions on easy modes of death. "If there were only a pin in the coffee that it might stick in my throat and choke me." Then the wish arose that the flat-iron would fall down from the shelf as she passed and crush her skull. She would be glad, too, if one of the earthquakes which occasionally occur in Komorn would happen now, and bury the house and all in it. As, however, none of these ways of dying came to pass, and Athalie would not speak, there was nothing left but to vent her wrath on Timéa. "She takes it easily, the ungrateful creature! She is not even crying; indeed it is easy for her to laugh—she can go to service, or work with a milliner and keep herself; she will be glad to be quit of us, and live on her own hook. You just wait, you will soon have to remember us. You'll be sorry—before a year is over you'll repent fast enough." Timéa had done nothing to repent of, but Frau Sophie saw it in the future, and her anger was only surpassed by the grief she felt about Athalie. "What will become of you, you sweet and only darling? Who will take care of you? What will become of your pretty white hands?"
"There, go and leave me in peace," said Athalie, shaking her lamenting mother off her neck. "Go and look out of the window and see if any one is coming up to us."
"Nobody, nobody!—who should be coming?"