dest person
the baroness had yet met, spoke her own tongue properly, had no dimples,
and did not try to stroke her hand. She looked on with mingled awe and
irritation at the easy manner in which Frau von Treumann treated this
great lady. It almost seemed as though she were patronising her. Really
these Treumanns were a brazen-faced race; audacious East Prussian
Junkers, who thought themselves as good as or better than the best. And
this one was not even a true Treumann, but an Ilmas, and of the inferior
Kadenstein branch; and the baroness's brother--that brother whose end
was so abrupt--had been quartered once during the man[oe]uvres at
Kadenstein, and had told her that it was a wretched place, with a
fowl-run that wanted mending within a few yards of the front door, and
that, the door standing open all day long, he had frequently met fowls
walking about in the hall and passages. Yet remembering the brother's
story, and how there was no shadow of the sort resting at present on
Frau von Treumann, though as she had a son there was no telling how long
her shadowless state would last, she tried to ingratiate herself with
that lady, who met her advances coolly, only warming into something like
responsiveness when Fraeulein Kuhraeuber was in question.

Fraeulein Kuhraeuber sat behind Letty and Miss Leech, as far away from the
others as she could. She had a stocking in her hand, but she did not
knit. She never knitted if she could avoid it, and was conscious that
from want of practice her needles moved more slowly than is usual--so
slowly, indeed, as to be conspicuous. Letty showed her photographs and
was very kind to her, instinctively perceiving that here was someone who
was as uneasy under the tall lady's stares as she was herself. She
privately thought her by far the best of the new arrivals, and wished
she knew enough German to inquire into her views respecting Schiller;
there was something in the Fraeulein's looks and manner that made her
think they would agree about Schiller.

Anna, too, ended by talking exclusively to this group. Her attempts to
join in what the others were saying had been unsuccessful; and with a
little twinge of disappointment, and a feeling of being for some
unexplained reason curiously out of it, she turned to Fraeulein
Kuhraeuber, and devoted herself more and more to her.

"They are inseparables already," remarked the baroness in a low voice to
Frau von Treumann. "The Miss finds her congenial, i