"Oh, if you had not sent your sister away!" I thought, and looking around for help I spied Lothar in the doorway, apparently about to take leave. I rushed over to him and caught his hands. "Come now, you aren't leaving us, are you? After all this trouble we must have something hot together--what do you say?" He turned red as blood, but I led him over to Iolanthe, who had just been relieved of her hat and cloak. "You must help me persuade him to stay, Iolanthe. His exertions for us have surely earned him a cup of tea." "I ask you," she said, without even raising her eyes. He made a stiff bow, and pulled at his moustache. I led them through the lighted halls to the dining-room. She looked neither to the right nor the left. All the splendour brought into being for her sake shone unnoticed. Two or three times she reeled on my arm, and at each crisis I looked anxiously about to see if the boy was with us. Praised be the Lord! He was still there! In the dining-room the tea kettle was boiling, by my sister's orders before she left. "Suppose you send for her?" flashed through my mind. "One carriage hurried off to Krakowitz, another to Gorowen--and she might be here inside of an hour." But I, poor old blade, was ashamed to admit my helplessness. Besides, there was Lothar for me to cling to in my desperation. Thank God, Lothar was still with us. "Well, be seated, children." I assumed the air of being wonderfully at ease. I can still see the whole scene. The snowy white tablecloth, the Meissen china, the old silver sugar bowl, the hanging lamp of copper overhead and in its hard light, to my right, Iolanthe, pale, stiff, with half-closed eyes, like a somnambulist; to my left, Lothar with his bushy hair and firm brown cheeks and the sombre fold between his brows, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth. Seeing that evidently the boy felt _de trop_ and would much rather have run away, I laid my hands affectionately on his shoulders and thanked him from the bottom of my heart for the torture he was imposing upon himself. "Take a good look at him, Iolanthe," I said. "We three shall be sitting here like this many a time again, enjoying each other's company." She nodded very slowly and closed her eyes altogether. Poor thing! Poor thing! And the dread almost took my breath away. "Be jolly, children," I said. "Lothar, tell us something funny--out of your own life. Come on now. Have you anything to smoke? No? Wait a moment, I'll get you something." And in my anguish I made for the cigar cabinet in the next room, as though a good smoke would bring everything to a happy ending. And then, gentlemen, when I came back with the box under my arm, I saw something through the open door that stopped the blood in my veins. Only once in my life have I experienced a similar shock. That was one evening when I was still a young cuirassier and I came home from a jolly party to find a telegram for me with the pleasant message, "Father just died."