The Assessor's words increased the interest with which the beautiful Frau von Sorr had inspired the Count, and it was still further heightened by a little scene that passed unobserved by any eyes in the ball-room except his own and the Assessor's. Frau von Sorr, who had hitherto endured, rather than heard, in perfect silence what her neighbour was saying to her, never even varying by a look the cold indifference of her bearing, suddenly turned upon him eyes flashing with indignation. The delicate colour in her cheek deepened to crimson, the beautiful lips unclosed as if to speak, when suddenly second thoughts seemed to assert their sway, and rising, with a look of inexpressible contempt at Repuin, she turned from him and walked slowly across the ball-room to join a group of young girls gathered about the daughter of the house, Adele von Guntram. "What does that mean, do you think?" Count Styrum asked the Assessor. "It means that the fellow went too far, and she turned her back upon him." "Poor young creature! she interests me, and I must hear more of her; pray tell me, my dear Hahn, what you know of her husband." "Certainly. What I know everybody knows, and there can be no indiscretion in relating it; for the world I would not be indiscreet. In fact, I am discretion itself. I make no boast of it, but I am. Of course I may tell you what all the world knows. Well, then, Herr von Sorr is utterly worthless. In the last few years he has squandered his own considerable property and his wife's fortune upon all sorts of follies, and worse, in the capital. What he now lives upon no one knows. All sorts of strange stories are told about that. They may not all be true, of course, but there must be some foundation for them, since Lieutenant von Arnim lately declared that he would not play when Herr von Sorr kept the bank, and that he did not like to have him for next neighbour when he kept it himself, for it was so disagreeable to have to keep a sharp eye upon the pile of money before him." "Rather strong, I should say." "It was indeed; but no one expressed any surprise at Arnim's declaration; indeed, I heard it whispered that one night when he sat next Sorr at play a hundred-thaler note had unaccountably disappeared; as I said, the man's character, or want of it, is such that were it not for his lovely wife every respectable house in the town would be closed against him." "But how did the fellow come to have so lovely a wife?"