"You have lately been so irritable, I cannot imagine what is the matter with you," lisps Hedwig.
Harry frowns.
Lato, meanwhile, has paid no heed to these remarks: he is apparently absorbed in his own thoughts, as, sitting on a lower step, he has been drawing with the handle of his riding-whip cabalistic signs in the gravel of the path. Now he looks up.
"I have a letter for you from Paula,--here it is," he observes, handing Harry a thick packet wrapped in light-blue tissue paper. While Harry, with a dubious expression of countenance, drops the packet into his coat-pocket, Lato continues: "Paula has all sorts of fancies about your absence. You have not been to Dobrotschau for two days. She is afraid you are ill, and that you are keeping it from her lest she should be anxious. She is coming over here with my wife tomorrow afternoon to look after you--I mean, to pay the ladies a visit." After Lato has given utterance to these words in a smooth monotone, his expression suddenly changes: his features betoken embarrassment, as, leaning towards Harry, he whispers, "I should like to speak with you alone. Can you give me a few minutes?"
Shortly afterwards, Harry rises and takes his friend with him to his own room, a spacious vaulted chamber next to the dining-room, which he shares with his young brother.
"Well, old fellow?" he begins, encouragingly, clapping Lato on the shoulder. Lato clears his throat, then slowly takes his seat in an arm-chair beside a table covered with a disorderly array of Greek and Latin books and scribbled sheets of paper. Harry sits opposite him, and for a while neither speaks.
The silence is disturbed only by the humming of the bees, and by the scratching at the window of an ancient apricot-tree, which seems desirous to call attention to what it has to say, but desists with a low rustle that sounds like a sigh. The tall clock strikes five; it is not late, and yet the room is dim with a gray-green light; the sunbeams have hard work to penetrate the leafy screen before the windows.
"Well?" Harry again says, at last, gently twitching his friend's sleeve.
"It is strange," Treurenberg begins; his voice has a hard, forced sound, he affects an indifference foreign to his nature, "but since my marriage I have had excellent luck at play. To speak frankly, it has been very convenient. Do not look so startled; wait until you are in my position. In the last few days, however, fortune has failed me. In my circumstances this is extremely annoying." He laughs, and flicks a grain of dust from his coat-sleeve.
Harry looks at him, surprised. "Ah! I understand. You want money. How much? If I can help you out I shall be glad to do so."