said Anna, in a low voice.

"No what, dear child?" inquired Frau von Treumann sweetly.

"I cannot send her away."

"You cannot send her away?" they cried together. Both let their work
drop into their laps, and both stared blankly at Anna, who looked at the
footstool.

"Have you made a lifelong contract with her?" asked Frau von Treumann,
with great heat, no such contract having been made in her own case.

"I did not quite say what I mean," said Anna, looking up again. "I do
not mean that I cannot really send her away, for of course I can if I
choose. Exactly what I mean is that I will not."

There was a pause. Neither of the ladies had expected such an attitude.

"This is very serious," then observed Frau von Treumann helplessly. She
took up her work again and pulled at the stitches, making knots in the
thread. Both she and the baroness had felt so certain that Anna would be
properly incensed when she heard the truth. Her manner without doubt
suggested displeasure, but the displeasure, strangely enough, seemed to
be directed against themselves instead of Fraeulein Kuhraeuber. What could
they, with dignity, do next? Frau von Treumann felt angry and perplexed.
She remembered Karlchen's advice in regard to ultimatums, and wished she
had remembered it sooner; but who could have imagined the extent of
Anna's folly? Never, she reflected, had she met anyone quite so foolish.

"It is a case for the police," burst out the baroness passionately, all
the pride of all the Elmreichs surging up in revolt against a fate
threatening to condemn her to spend the rest of her days with the
progeny of a postman. "Your advertisement specially mentioned good birth
as essential, and she is here under false pretences. You have the proofs
in her letters. She is within reach of the arm of the law."

Anna could not help smiling. "Don't denounce her," she said. "I should
be appalled if anything approaching the arm of the law got into my
house. I'll burn the proofs after dinner." Then she turned to Frau von
Treumann. "If you think it over," she said, "I _know_ you will not wish
me to be so merciless, so pitiless, as to send Emilie back to misery
only because her father, who has been dead thirty years, was a postman."

"But, Anna, you must be reasonable--you must look at the other side. No
Treumann has ever yet been required to associate----"

"But if he was a good man? If he did his work honestly, and said his
prayers, and behaved himself