bout something else, then."

"No, he really cried about Uncle Joachim. He really loved him."

Axel looked profoundly unconvinced.

"But after all those are not the real reasons," said Anna; "they ought
to be, but they're not. The simple truth is that I am a coward, and I am
frightened--dreadfully frightened--of possible scenes." And she looked
at him and laughed ruefully. "There--you see what it is to be a woman.
If I were a man, how easy things would be. Please consider the
mortification of knowing that if he persuades long enough I shall give
in, against my better judgment. He has the strongest will I think I ever
came across."

"But you have not yet given in, I hope, on any point of importance?"

"Up to now I have managed to say No to everything I don't want to do.
But you would laugh if you knew what those Nos cost me. Why cannot the
place go on as it was? I am perfectly satisfied. But hardly a day passes
without some wonderful new plan being laid before me, and he talks--oh,
how he talks! I believe he would convince even you."

"The man is quite beyond your control," said Axel in a voice of anger;
and voices of anger commonly being loud voices, this one produced the
effect of three doors being simultaneously opened: the door leading to
the servants' quarters, through which Marie looked and vanished again,
retreating to the kitchen to talk prophetically of weddings; the
dining-room door, behind which Dellwig had grown more and more impatient
at being kept waiting so long; and the drawing-room door, on the other
side of which the baroness had been lingering for some moments, desiring
to go upstairs for her scissors, but hesitating to interrupt Anna's
business with the inspector, whose voice she thought it was that she
heard.

The baroness shut her door again immediately. "_Aha_--the admirer!" she
said to herself; and went back quickly to her seat. "The Miss is talking
to a _juenge Herr_," she announced, her eyes wider open than ever.

"A _juenge Herr_?" echoed Frau von Treumann. "I thought the inspector was
old?"

"It must be Axel Lohm," said the princess, not raising her eyes from her
work. "He often comes in."

"He comes courting, evidently," said the baroness with a sub-acid smile.

"It has not been evident to me," said the princess coldly.

"I thought it looked like it," said the baroness, with more meekness.

"Is that the Lohm who was engaged to one of the Kiederfels girls some
years ago?" asked F