I don't think she relished my dry bluntness for I saw a slight color gather in her cheeks.
I thought to myself that I'd come very close to spoiling the girl by my silliness in the cellar. I'd made a fool of myself, but I'd do it no more in spite of her heavenly resemblance to my photograph.
"That will be all at present, Thusis," I said coldly. "Come back in half an hour for orders. And see that you wear a clean apron."
Her lovely face was quite red as she passed out, forgetting to curtsey. As for my own emotions they were mixed.
One thing was certain; there was going to be a show-down between Thusis and me before very long.
If she were indeed the peasant girl she pretended to be, she'd recover her balance when I did, and learn her proper place. If she were, perhaps, a child of the bourgeoisie—some educated and superior young girl compelled to take service through family misfortune—and I now entertained no further doubt that this was really the case—she had nobody but herself to blame for my present attitude.
But!—but if, by any inexplicable chance, her social circumstances were, or had once been, even better than bourgeoise, then the girl was a political agent in masquerade. But, whoever she was, she had no business to presume on her wit and insolent beauty to amuse herself at my expense. And if she had really been sent by the Swiss police into my household to keep an eye on me she was going about it in a silly and stupid manner.
For such surveillance I didn't care a pewter penny. Spies had lagged after me ever since I entered Switzerland. It was rather amusing than otherwise.
But, as far as Thusis was concerned, I now decided that, no matter what she was or had been, she had voluntarily become my servant; and I intended that she should not again forget that fact.
As I sat there at my desk, grimly planning discipline for Thusis, I chanced to look up at the photograph of "The Laughing Girl"; and stern thoughts melted like frost at sunrise.