"Oh, I know that, too; I am not so stupid as you always try to make me appear. But since it happened so long ago—"
"Oh, Roswitha, that everlasting 'so long ago!' It shows plainly enough that you don't know anything about it. You are always telling the same old story about your father with the red-hot tongs and how he came at you with them, and every time I put a red-hot heater in the iron I see him about to kill you on account of the child that died so long ago. Indeed, Roswitha, you talk about it all the time, and all there is left for you to do now is to tell little Annie the story, and as soon as little Annie has been confirmed she will be sure to hear it, perhaps the same day. I am grieved that you should have had all that experience, and yet your father was only a village blacksmith who shod horses and put tires on wheels, and now you come forward and expect our gracious master calmly to put up with all this, merely because it happened so long ago. What do you mean by long ago? Six years is not long ago. And our gracious mistress, who, by the way, is not coming back—his Lordship just told me so—her Ladyship is not yet twenty-six and her birthday is in August, and yet you come to me with the plea of 'long ago.' If she were thirty-six, for at thirty-six, I tell you, one must be particularly cautious, and if his Lordship had done nothing, then aristocratic people would have 'cut' him. But you are not familiar with that word, Roswitha, you know nothing about it."
"No, I know nothing about it and care less, but what I do know is that you are in love with his Lordship."
Johanna struck up a convulsive laugh.
"Well, laugh. I have noticed it for a long time. I don't put it past you, but fortunately his Lordship takes no note of it. The poor wife, the poor wife!"
Johanna was anxious to declare peace. "That will do now, Roswitha. You are mad again, but, I know, all country girls get mad."
"May be."
"I am just going to post these letters now and see whether the porter has got the other paper. I understood you to say, didn't I, that he sent Lena to get one? There must be more in it; this is as good as nothing at all."
CHAPTER XXX
[After Effi and Mrs. Zwicker had been in Ems for nearly three weeks they took breakfast one morning in the open air. The postman was late and Effi was impatient, as she had received no letter from Innstetten for four days. The coming of a pretty waitress to clear away the breakfast dishes started a conversation about pretty housemaids, and Effi spoke enthusiastically of her Johanna's unusual abundance of beautiful flaxen hair. This led to a discussion of painful experiences, in the course of which Effi admitted that she knew what sin meant, but she distinguished between an occasional sin and a habitual sin. Mrs. Zwicker was indulging in a tirade against the pleasure resorts and the ill-sounding names of places in the environs of Berlin, when the postman came. There was nothing from Innstetten, but a large registered letter from Hohen-Cremmen. Effi felt an unaccountable hesitation to open it. Overcoming this she found in the envelope a long letter from her mother and a package of banknotes, upon which her father had written with a red pencil the sum they represented. She leaned back in the rocking chair and began to read. Before she had got very far, the letter fell out of her hands and all the blood left her face. With an effort she picked up the letter and started to go to her room, asking Mrs. Zwicker to send the maid. By holding to the furniture as she dragged herself along she was able to reach her bed, where she fell in a swoon.]