His host, however, made haste to disburden himself of a fine speech. "You will have something to tell in Berlin, will you not? You have at least seen how a Bohemian gentleman lives. No lounging-chairs in the drawing-room, but Tokay in the cellar. Original, at all events, eh?"
"Extremely original," the lawyer assented.
On the threshold he paused. "One question more, Herr Baron," he began, bending upon his condescending host a look of keenest scrutiny. "Did the late Frau von Strachinsky leave no written document by which she provided for her daughter's future?"
Strachinsky listened to this question with a scarcely perceptible degree of embarrassment. "Not that I know of," he said, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.
Erika suddenly remembered that her mother had been busily engaged in writing a few days before her death.
Meanwhile, her step-father, having gained entire control of his features, continued, "Moreover, in this case any testamentary document would have been entirely superfluous. My wife knew well that should she die I should care for her daughter as for my own."
"H'm!" the Doctor ejaculated. "And did Frau von Strachinsky never speak to you of her Berlin relatives, Countess?"
"No," Erika replied, thoughtfully. "She was very restless for some weeks before her death, and often told me that as soon as we were quite sure of being uninterrupted she had an important communication to make to me. But she never did so: death closed her lips."
The Doctor reflected for a moment, and then said, "I am rather surprised, Herr von Strachinsky, that you did not advise old Countess Lenzdorff of your wife's death."
Strachinsky assumed an injured air. "Permit me to ask you, Herr Doctor," he said, with lofty emphasis, "why I should have informed Countess Lenzdorff of my adored wife's death? Countess Lenzdorff was my bitterest enemy. She opposed my wife's union with me not only openly, but with all sorts of underhand schemes, and when she could not succeed in severing the tie that united our hearts, she dismissed my wife and her daughter without one friendly word of farewell. Since she entirely ignored my wife while she lived, how was I to suppose that she would take any interest in the death of my idolized Emma?"