“That's right. Your Highness is pleased to mock my excess of candour. But in view of all this you can guess how extraordinarily welcome the Countess was to me, when she came to see me in Fifth Avenue. She does not express herself very clearly, but rather in a mysterious sort of way, and the boundary line at which she begins to drivel is not always quite clearly apparent. But that only strikes me as right and instructive, as it gives a good idea of the boundlessness of misery and wickedness in the world. You envy me the Countess, don't you?”
“Envy? H'm. You seem to assume, Miss Spoelmann, that I have never had my eyes opened.”
“Have you?”
“Once or twice, maybe. For instance, things have come to my ears about our lackeys, which you would scarcely dream of.”
“Are your lackeys so bad?”
“Bad? Good-for-nothing, that's what they are. For one thing they play into each other's hands, and scheme, and take bribes from the tradesmen——”
“But, Prince, that's comparatively harmless.”
“Yes, true, it's nothing to compare with the way the Countess has had her eyes opened.”
They broke into a trot, and, leaving at the sign-post the gently rising and falling high-road, which they had followed through the pine-woods, turned into the sandy short cut, between high blackberry-covered banks, which led into the tufted meadow-land round the “Pheasantry.” Klaus Heinrich was at home in these parts: he stretched out his arm (the right one) to point out everything to his companions, though there was not much worth seeing. Yonder lay the Schloss, closed and silent, with its shingle-roof and its lightning-conductors on the edge of the wood. On one side was the pheasants' enclosure, which gave the place its name, and on the other Stavenüter's tea-garden, where he had sometimes sat with Raoul Ueberbein. The spring sun shone mildly over the damp meadow-land and shed a soft haze over the distant woods.
They reined in their horses in front of the tea-garden, and Imma Spoelmann took stock of the prosaic country-house which rejoiced in the name of the “Pheasantry.”