"I would have written to you," Frau von Arnim went on, in the same judicial tone, "but I knew that my letters would find their way into Wolff’s hands, and at that time I felt sure that you have some sufficient explanation to offer us for the unbelievable story which your friend, Captain Arnold, was clumsy enough to relate to us. I felt, as I say, sure that there was some painful mistake, and one which it would be unkind and useless to tell Wolff. Besides, for your sake I thought it better to wait. If there was some mistake, as I firmly believed, a letter could only have troubled and puzzled you. So I waited, meaning to ask you privately for an explanation. Since I have been in Berlin I have heard enough to see that my caution was altogether unnecessary." "Aunt Magda!" Frau von Arnim lifted a quiet hand, as though to command silence. "It is obvious that Captain Arnold must have told you of our interview," she said, "and obvious that you have remained his friend. I hear that he is constantly at your house. I do not know what Wolff thinks and feels on the matter. He loves you, and is himself too honourable not to have a blind confidence in you. That, however, is not sufficient. _I_ must know whether that confidence is justified." Nora wondered afterwards that she did not get up then and go. Every inflection of the calm voice was a fresh insult, and yet she felt spell-bound, incapable of either attack or self-defence. In her mind she kept on repeating, "YOU are cruel, wicked, and unjust!" but the words were never spoken; they were stifled by the very violence of her indignation and growing hatred. Frau von Arnim saw the hatred and interpreted it in the light of her own bitterness. For, little as Nora knew it, her "enemy" was suffering intensely. There were in Frau von Arnim’s heart two things worth more to her than love or happiness: they were the fetishes against which Nora had railed in scorn and anger—"_Standesehre_" and pride of name. Since her arrival in Berlin a scandal had drifted to Frau von Arnim’s ears which had been like a vital blow at the two great principles on which her life was built; and had Wolff been the cause instead of Nora she would not have been less severe, less indignant. As it was, she saw in his wife a careless, perhaps unworthy bearer of her name and her scorn and disappointment smothered what had been, and might still have been, a deep affection. "I must ask you to answer one question," she continued. "Was it true what Captain Arnold told me? Were you his promised wife at the time when you married Wolff?"