"You know more about it than any body I have ever met
with, except my own father, who would never tell a word."

"And quite right he was, miss, according to his views. But come to my
little room, unless you are afraid. I can tell you some things that your
father never knew."

"Afraid! do you think I am a baby still? But I can not bear that Mr.
Strouss should be locked up on my account."

"Then he shall come out," said Mrs. Strouss, looking at me very
pleasantly. "That was just like your father, Miss Erema. But I fall
into the foreign ways, being so much with the foreigners." Whether
she thought it the custom among "foreigners" for wives to lock their
husbands in back kitchens was more than she ever took the trouble to
explain. But she walked away, in her stout, firm manner, and presently
returned with Mr. Strouss, who seemed to be quite contented, and made me
a bow with a very placid smile.

"He is harmless; his ideas are most grand and good," his wife explained
to me, with a nod at him. "But I could not have you in with the
gentleman, Hans. He always makes mistakes with the gentlemen, miss, but
with the ladies he behaves quite well."

"Yes, yes, with the ladies I am nearly always goot," Herr Strouss
replied, with diffidence. "The ladies comprehend me right, all right,
because I am so habitual with my wife. But the gentlemans in London have
no comprehension of me."

"Then the loss is on their side," I answered, with a smile; and he said,
"Yes, yes, they lose vere much by me."

CHAPTER XXIII

BETSY'S TALE

Now I scarcely know whether it would be more clear to put into narrative
what I heard from Betsy Bowen, now Wilhelmina Strouss, or to let her
tell the whole in her own words, exactly as she herself told it then
to me. The story was so dark and sad--or at least to myself it so
appeared--that even the little breaks and turns of lighter thought or
livelier manner, which could scarcely fail to vary now and then
the speaker's voice, seemed almost to grate and jar upon its sombre
monotone. On the other hand, by omitting these, and departing from
her homely style, I might do more of harm than good through failing to
convey impressions, or even facts, so accurately. Whereas the gist and
core and pivot of my father's life and fate are so involved (though
not evolved) that I would not miss a single point for want of time or
diligence. Therefore let me not deny Mrs. Strouss, my nurse, the right
to put her words