"No," says she, decidedly.
Indeed Linda does not look like the daughter of a self-made manufacturer; rather like a Parisian actress with a talent for aristocratic rôles.
"And now you must show me everything in my new domain, Elsa, everything," cries the young woman, and Elsa says, "Are you not tired, will you not first have a cup of tea?" Then Linda says animatedly, "No, no, I must first see everything, everything!"
Felix has disappeared with his little darling. Elsa leads her sister-in-law through the rooms of the ground floor and first story, shows her the elegantly furnished rooms which Elsa has herself helped arrange for her.
"Oh, you poor Elsa, how you have tormented yourself for me!" cries Linda, and finds everything splendid and charming, with the affability of a newly married queen who, entering her kingdom, wishes to make herself popular.
"There! I will reserve the attic rooms. I begin to feel the dust of travel. It is now much too late to take tea; as soon as I have changed my clothes, I will join you in the drawing-room. I do not yet know the way to my room--oh, yes--that is the room for my maid---parfait, parfait--au revoir, my dear heart!" And before she leaves her, Linda presses another kiss upon Elsa's cheek.
On her way to the drawing-room, Elsa heard a little voice prattling and laughing behind one of the tall doors which open on the corridor. "May I come in?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer, she entered the room where Felix, his child on his knee, sat in an arm-chair and held a sugar-plum high in the air, while the child climbed up on him, half laughing, half vexed at his vain attempt to overcome his father's teasing resistance. Both were so absorbed in their occupation that they did not notice Elsa's entrance. She gazed at the pretty group with emotion--the gray-haired man, the blond child, until finally Felix surrendered the sugar-plum, and the child ate it with a very important air, smacking his lips, and with contortions of the face by which he seemed to show the ambitious desire of resembling as much as possible his little friend the monkey in the London Zoo.
Then Elsa laid her hand lovingly on her brother's shoulder. "Oh, how you play with the child," said she.
He raised his face to her, the pale face with the sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, in which everything was old but pain, which appeared fresh and young every morning, and said hastily: "I must love him doubly now. Who knows whether later he will have anything to do with me?"