When the first compliments had been exchanged, Rosa took up a position behind the door of this partitioned space, for the street passed close by the window, and at this late hour he was anxious not to give occasion to unpleasant surmises on the part of passers by. Of a sudden, however, Sophia saw her husband run by the window. The intent to commit a sin may betray itself by a superabundance of carefulness and caution; Rosa and Sophia were so startled at the sight of the runner, that she begged the young gentleman to get behind the partition until her husband should go back to the shooting-range. The Venner went stumbling into the _sanctum sanctorum_, while Sophia placed herself at the door of it, and, as her husband entered, made as though she were just coming out of it, closing the door after her. The moment he had stuttered out the news of his elevation in rank, he darted out of the room, crying, "She upstairs there knows nothing about it yet." Gladness and hurried draughts of liquor had just blurred the sharp outlines of his lighter ideas with a thin haze or fog. He ran out and called "Madame Siebenkæs" up the stairs (he was anxious to be off again so as to join the procession). She hastened half way down, heard the glad news with trembling, and, either by way of masking her joy, or as a fruit of a warmer liking for her husband now that fortune seemed kinder to him (or it may have been, perhaps, _another_ fruit which joy commonly bears, namely, anxiety, or shall I name it fear?), she threw down to him the question, "Is Mr. von Meyern out yet?" "What! was _he_ in my room just now?" cried he, while his wife echoed, unbidden, from the door, "Has _he_ been in the house?" "He was here, upstairs," Lenette replied, with a touch of suspicion, "and he hasn't gone out yet."