Brand wondered at her quickness in knowing his name after one glance at his billeting-paper, and said, “Please do not trouble, _gnàdiges Fraulein_,” when he saw a look of disapproval, almost of alarm, on the mother’s face. “It will be better for Truda to show the gentleman to his rooms. I will ring for her.” Elsa von Kreuzenach challenged her mother’s authority by a smile of amusement, and there was a slight deepening of that delicate colour in her face. “Truda is boiling the usual cabbage for the usual _Mittagessen._ I will go, mother.” She turned to Brand with a smile and bowed to him. “I will act as your guide upstairs, Captain Brand. After that you may find your own way. It is not difficult.” Brand, who described the scene to me, told me that the girl went very quickly up a wide flight of stairs so that in his big riding boots he found it difficult to keep pace with her. She went down a long corridor lined with etchings on the walls, and opened a white door leading into a big room furnished as a library. There was a wood fire burning there, and at a glance Brand noticed one or two decorations on the walls--a pair of foils with a fencing-mask and gauntlets, some charcoal drawings--one of a girl’s head, which was this girl’s when that gold hair of hers hung in two Gretchen pig-tails--and some antlers. “Here you can sit and smoke your pipe,” said Elsa von Kreuzenach. “Also, if you are bored, you can read those books. You see we have many English authors--Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, Kipling--heaps. My brother and I used to read all we could get of English books.” Brand remembered that Franz von Kreuzenach had read Kipling. He had quoted “Puck of Pook’s Hill” to Eileen O’Connor. “Now and then,” he said, “I may read a little German.” “Pooh!” said the girl. “It is so dull, most of it. Not exciting, like yours.” She opened another door. “Here is your bedroom. It used to belong to my brother Heinrich.” “Won’t he want it?” asked Brand. He could have bitten his tongue out for that question when the girl answered it. “He was killed in Flanders.” A sudden sadness took possession of her eyes and Brand said, “I’m sorry.” “Yes. I was sorry, too, and wept for weeks. He was a nice boy, so jolly, as you say. He would have been an artist if he had lived. All those charcoal sketches are by him.” She pointed to the drawing of a young man’s head over the dressing-table. “That is my brother Franz. He is home again, _Gott sei dank!_ Heinrich worshipped him.” Brand looked at the portrait of the man who had saved Eileen O’Connor. He had Eileen’s letter to him in his pocket. It was a good-looking head, clean-cut, with frank eyes, rather noble. “I hope we shall meet one day,” said Brand. Elsa von Kreuzenach seemed pleased with those words. “He will like to meet you--ever so much. You see, he was educated at Oxford, and does not forget his love for England.” “In spite of the war?” asked Brand.