"There!" she said, handing the young officer a cup, "you may not agree with my views of life, but you must praise my tea, which is in fact much too good for you, who follow the vile German custom of spoiling it with sugar."
She herself had put in the sugar for him, taking care to give him just as much as he liked; she handed him a plate, and offered him the delicate wafers which she knew he preferred. She was excessively kind to him, and he valued her; he was cordially attached to her; she had been his mother's oldest friend; she had spoiled him from boyhood, and had, as she said, "thought the world of him." This could not but please any man. He appreciated so highly her kindness and thoughtfulness that until to-night the selfishness of which she boasted, and by which she had laid down the rules of her life, had seemed to him little more than amusing eccentricity. But to-night her attitude towards her grandchild grieved him. Not that he regarded this grandchild from a romantic point of view. He was no unpractical dreamer, nor even what is usually called an idealist, which means in German nothing except a muddled brain that deems it quite improper to hold clear views upon any subject or to look any reality boldly in the face. On the contrary, he had a very calm and sensible way of regarding matters. Consequently he thought it probable that the poor, neglected young girl, left for three years to the care of a boorish step-father, awkward and tactless as she must be under the circumstances, would be anything but a suitable addition to the household of the Countess Lenzdorff; but, good heavens! the girl was the old lady's flesh and blood, a poor thing who had lost her mother three years previously and had had no one to speak a kind word to her since. If the poor creature were ill-bred and neglected, whose fault was it, in fact? It passed his power of comprehension that the old lady should feel nothing save the inconvenience and annoyance of the situation, that she should be stirred by no emotion of pity.
Perhaps she guessed his thoughts,--she was skilled in divining the thoughts of others,--but she cared nothing about shocking people; on the contrary, she rather liked to do so.
When he picked up one of the books on her table she said, "None of your namby-pamby literature, Goswyn, but a bright, witty book. Tell me, do you think that in my grand-daughter's honour I ought to lock up all my entertaining books and subscribe to the 'Children's Friend'?"
"Let us take for granted that your grand-daughter has not contracted the habit of dipping into every book she sees lying about," Goswyn observed.
"Let us hope so," she said, with a laugh; "but who knows? For three years she has been without any one to look after her, and probably she has already devoured her precious step-father's entire library."
"Oh, Countess!"
"What would you have? Such cases do occur. Look at your sister-in-law Dorothea: she told me, with an air of great satisfaction, that before her marriage she had read all Belot."
"She avowed the same thing to me just after she came home from her wedding journey, and she seemed to think it very clever," replied Goswyn, slowly.
"H'm! the wicked fairy always asserts that you were in love with your sister-in-law," the old lady said, archly menacing him with her forefinger.