as her own age; but this was a mere
girl, and a girl, too, who from the way she dressed, clearly thought
herself pretty. Surely it was strange that so young a woman should be
living here quite unattached, quite independent apparently of all
control, with a great deal of money at her disposal, and only one little
girl to give her a countenance? Suppose she were not a proper person at
all, suppose she were an outcast from society, a being on whom her own
countrypeople turned their backs? This desire to share her fortune with
respectable ladies could only be explained in two ways: either she had
been moved thereto by an enthusiastic piety of which not a trace had as
yet appeared, or she was an improper person anxious to rebuild her
reputation with the aid and countenance of the ladies of good family she
had entrapped into her house.

The baroness stiffened as she sat. It was her brother who had cheated at
cards and shot himself, and it was her sister of whom Axel Lohm had
heard strange tales; and few people are more savagely proper than the
still respectable relations of the demoralised. "The service in this
house is very bad," she said aloud and irascibly, getting up to ring
again. "No doubt she has trouble with her servants."

But there was a knock at the door while her hand was on the bell, and on
her calling "Come in," instead of the servant her hostess appeared,
dressed to the baroness's eye in a truly amazing and reprehensible
fashion, and looking as cheerful as an innocent infant for whom no such
thing as evil-doing exists. Also she seemed quite unconscious of her
clothes and bare neck, nor did she offer to explain why she was arrayed
as though she were going to a ball; and she stood a moment in the
doorway trying to say something in German and pretending to laugh at her
own ineffectual efforts, but really laughing, the baroness felt sure, in
order to show that she had dimples; which were not, after all, very
wonderful things to have--before she had grown so thin she almost had
one herself.

"May I come in?" said Anna at last, giving up the other and more
complicated speech.

"_Bitte_," said the baroness, with the smile the French call _pince_.

"Has no one been to unpack your things?"

"I rang."

"And no one came? Oh, I shall scold Marie. It is the only thing I can do
well in German. Can you speak English?"

"No."

"Nor understand it?"

"No."

"French?"

"No."

"Oh, well, you must be patient then