Are they so absorbed in each other as not to observe the apparition which presents itself for an instant at the drawing-room door, only to glide away immediately?
Meanwhile, in the garden a thrilling drama is being enacted. So thoroughly bewildered at last by the Baroness's system of instruction that his brain refuses to respond to even the small demands which her growing contempt for his capacity permits her to make upon it, poor Freddy feels so thoroughly ashamed of his inability that he lifts up his voice and weeps aloud. When his mother hastens to him to learn what has so distressed her son, he throws his arms around her waist and cries out, in a tone of heart-breaking despair, "Mamma, mamma, what will become of me? I am so stupid,--so very stupid!"
Katrine finds this beyond a jest. "I must entreat you not to trouble yourself further with my boy's education, if this is the only result you achieve, Lina," she says, provoked, whereupon the Baroness replies, angrily,--
"I certainly shall not insist upon continuing my lessons, especially as never in my life have I found any one so obtuse of comprehension in the simplest matters as your son."
"Ah, you insinuate that my boy is a blockhead. Let me assure you, however----"
In what mutual amenities the conversation of the sisters-in-law would have culminated must remain a subject of conjecture; for at this moment Stasy comes tripping along, saying, with an affected smile,--
"How wonderfully one can be mistaken as to character in others! Yes, yes, still waters--still waters. Ha! ha!"
"What do you mean with your still waters?" Katrine asks, contemptuously.
"Hush!" And Stasy archly lays her finger on her lip with a significant glance towards the boy, who with his arms still about his mother's waist is drying his tears upon her sleeve.
"Run into the house, Freddy, and bathe your eyes, and then we will take a walk," Katrine says to her little son. "What is the matter?" she then asks, coldly, turning to Stasy.