The farmer was already getting on in years when he married her, and was a widower into the bargain with a big son. "That couldn't have been an easy matter either for the little thing," said those who were friendly towards Mrs. Tiralla. But she had behaved very well; anyhow, Mr. Tiralla had grown stout, and used to tell those who had warned him against proposing to the girl of seventeen, "that his Sophia was the sweetest woman in creation, and that he was living in clover." And he still said so, even now, after they had been married almost fifteen years. She had bewitched him. Her big eyes, that gleamed like dark velvet in her white face, played the fool with him. He could not be angry with her, although she often tried him sorely. And, all things considered, wasn't it rather nice of her that she was so coy and reserved? The owner of [Pg 19] Starydwór had, in the course of his life, come across enough women who had thrown themselves at his head. He could not even credit Hanusia, his first wife, with a similar modesty. And his Sophia was pretty. It flattered the elderly man's vanity immensely that nobody ever spoke of her as "Mrs. Tiralla," plain and simple, but always as "the beautiful Mrs. Tiralla." When he drove with her through Gradewitz--he on the box, she on the seat behind, in her veil and feather boa--everybody stared. And even in Gnesen the officers dining at the hotel used to rush to the window and crane their necks in order to see the beautiful Mrs. Tiralla drive past. Then Mr. Tiralla would crack his whip and look very elated. Let them envy him his wife. _They_ did not know--nobody knew--that he many an evening had received such a vigorous blow on the chest from her, when he had attempted to approach her, as nobody would ever have given such a delicate-looking woman credit for. On such occasions he would console himself with the thought that his Sophia never had cared for love-making. But she was a dear little woman, all the same, a beautiful woman, his own sweet wife, from whose hand the food tasted twice as good and agreed with him twice as well. And she was still as beautiful as on the first day; perhaps even more so now that she was over thirty, for she used to be much too thin and small, and did not weigh even seven stone. He could have carried her on his hand.