Ernestine looked at her in amazement. "Will you--are you to be a mother to me, then?"
The Staatsräthin hesitated for a moment, and then said, "I should like to be. You are an orphan, and I pity you. If you would only be what a woman should be,--if you would only conform to our social and Christian views, I could give you all a mother's love."
Ernestine withdrew her hand. "I thank you for your kind intentions, but, if these are the only conditions upon which you can bestow your affection upon me, I fear I shall never deserve it."
The Staatsräthin shook her head in rising displeasure. "You do not understand me."
"I understand you far better than I am understood by you."
"You probably think my homely wisdom very easy of comprehension--while yours is too deep for my powers of mind." The Staatsräthin laid down her knife, and pushed away the dish of beans. "But the time may come when you will think of what I have been saying, and will be sorry that you have repulsed me."
"Frau Staatsräthin, I have not repulsed you. I am only too honest to accept a regard bestowed upon me on conditions that I cannot fulfil. To gain your approval I should be obliged to equivocate,--and I have always been true. It is robbery to accept an affection springing from a false idea of one's character. What would it profit me to throw myself on your breast and silently return your tenderness, when I know that you would love me not for what I am, but for what I might pretend to be? Sooner or later you would discover your error, and despise me for deceiving you. No, I am not unworthy of the love of good people just as I am, but if I cannot win it by frankness and conscientiousness, I will never try to steal it."
"You speak proudly. Such self-assertion does not become a young girl towards an old woman, least of all towards the mother of her best friend and benefactor."
"Frau Staatsräthin," cried Ernestine, "I shall always be grateful to your son for his kindness to me, but surely I ought not to testify my gratitude by hypocrisy and slavish servility."
"My dear," said the Staatsräthin, controlling herself, "you agitate yourself causelessly. I am a simple, practical woman, who does not speak your language, and cannot follow you in your flights. I have no desire to drag you down to us. I simply wish to show you the world in its actual shape, that you may know what awaits you when you come to make your home in it; and I would gladly receive you in my motherly arms, lest you should receive too severe a shock from your first contact with reality."