Dinner being over, we withdrew to another room to take our coffee. The merchant and his son, both ardent musicians in their leisure hours, played a sonata for pianoforte and violin. I was at the opposite extremity of the room, looking at some fine proof impressions of prints from the old masters, when a voice at my side startled me by an unexpected question.
"May I ask, sir, if you are acquainted with Mr. Keller's son?"
I looked round, and discovered Frau Meyer.
"Have you seen him lately?" she proceeded, when I had acknowledged that I was acquainted with Fritz. "And can you tell me where he is now?"
I answered both these questions. Frau Meyer looked thoroughly well satisfied with me. "Let us have a little talk," she said, and seated herself, and signed to me to take a chair near her.
"I feel a true interest in Fritz," she resumed, lowering her voice so as not to be heard by the musicians at the other end of the room. "Until to-day, I have heard nothing of him since he left Wurzburg. I like to talk about him—he once did me a kindness a long time since. I suppose you are in his confidence? Has he told you why his father sent him away from the University?"
My reply to this was, I am afraid, rather absently given. The truth is, my mind was running on some earlier words which had dropped from the old lady's lips. "He once did me a kindness a long time since." When had I last heard that commonplace phrase? and why did I remember it so readily when I now heard it again?
"Ah, his father did a wise thing in separating him from that woman and her daughter!" Frau Meyer went on. "Madame Fontaine deliberately entrapped the poor boy into the engagement. But perhaps you are a friend of hers? In that case, I retract and apologize."
"Quite needless," I said.
"You are not a friend of Madame Fontaine?" she persisted.