“Ida, I know life, and I am not a little goose any more. I have the use of my senses. I don’t say that Mother would actually insist on it--when there is a dispute over anything she usually avoids it and says ‘_Assez!_’ But Tom wants it. I know Tom. He thinks: ‘Anybody! Anybody who isn’t absolutely impossible.’ For this time it is not a question of a brilliant match, but just one that will make good the other one. That is what he thinks. As soon as Permaneder appeared, you may be sure that Tom made all the proper inquiries about his business, and found it was all right--and then, as far as he was concerned, the matter was settled. Tom is a politician--he knows what he wants. Who was it threw Christian out? That is strong language, Ida, but that was really the truth of it. And why? Because he was compromising the firm and the family. And in his eyes I do the same thing--not with words or acts, but by my very existence as a divorced woman. He wants that put an end to, and he is right. I love him none the less for that--nor, I hope, does he me. In all these years, I have always longed to be out in the world again; it is so dull here in this house. God punish me if that is a sin: but I am not much more than thirty, and I still feel young. People differ about that. You had grey hair at thirty, like all your family and that uncle that died at Marienwerder.” More and more observations of the same kind followed as the night wore on; and every now and again she would say: “It is to be, after all.” But at length she went to sleep, and slept for five hours on end, deeply and peacefully. CHAPTER VI A mist lay over the town. But--or so said Herr Longuet, the livery man in John Street, as he himself drove the covered char-à-banc up to the door of the house in Meng Street: “The sun will be out before an hour is over”--which was most encouraging. The Frau Consul, Antonie, Herr Permaneder, Erica, and Ida had breakfast together and gathered one after another, ready for the expedition, in the great entry, to wait for Gerda and Tom. Frau Grünlich, in a cream-coloured frock with a satin tie, looked her best, despite the loss of sleep the night before. Her doubts and fears seemed to be laid to rest, and her manner was assured, calm, and almost formal as she talked with their guest and fastened her glove-button. She had regained the tone of the old days. The well-known conviction of her own importance, of the weightiness of her own decisions, the consciousness that once more a day had come when she was to inscribe herself decisively in the family history--all this filled her heart and made it beat higher. She had dreamed of seeing that page in the family papers on which she would write down the fact of her betrothal--the fact that should obliterate and make void the black spot which the page contained. She looked forward to the moment when Tom would appear and she would greet him with a meaning nod.