"You will do no such thing." Frau von Warnow had listened to Hildegarde, speechless with amazement, and it was quite a long time before she regained her composure. "You will do no such thing," she repeated with anger. "You have not only your duty to your own people, but to us also. I will not remind you of what we have already done for you. It is true we are rich, but, in spite of this, naturally we should not have given you, your parents and your brother, hundreds and hundreds of pounds if we had not taken it for granted that you would have repaid us in some way or other. When you say that you will tell Lieutenant Winkler everything before marriage, you say something that is simply ridiculous. The four thousand marks won't matter in the least to him with all his money, and you may be sure he's clever enough to know that a beautiful girl only marries a middle-class lieutenant for his money. If you tell him everything beforehand you warn him, to a certain extent, against marrying you, and then he can't very well help drawing back. And then, what will you do?" Hildegarde shrugged her beautiful shoulders. "What shall I do? I don't mind in the least. I shouldn't starve. As I told you before, I should get a situation of some kind or other." Her aunt laughed contemptuously: "You are out of your mind! What do you know, I say? What can you do? Have you any idea of housekeeping, cooking, domestic work? You certainly couldn't get a post as a companion. You are not a good musician, you don't read aloud well, your knowledge of foreign languages is practically _nil_. So how could you earn your living?" She spoke with the bitterest irony, but when she saw the look of despair on Hildegarde's face, sympathy got the better of her, and almost tenderly she put her arm round the girl's neck. "Don't be so sad, it will turn out better than you think. I can quite understand that Fritz's letter has terribly upset you, but he doesn't mean it all. I will talk to your uncle to-day about sending the money. He shall send it, or I will. And now, hold your head high. It is high time for us to go." "Yes, do go, aunt, but let me stay at home. I am really not in the mood to go to a party." "What? Hildegarde,"--her aunt thought she could not have heard rightly--"you want to stay at home? That would never do. Especially to-day when the court has promised to put in an appearance, you must not fail to be there. And do you imagine that I had this costly new costume made for you to take it off and put it in your wardrobe? Whatever answer should I give when people inquired after you?" A sorrowful little laugh played round Hildegarde's mouth. "Nobody will ask after me; they will be delighted not to see me." "And what about Lieutenant Winkler? What am I to say to him when he makes inquiries after you?" Hildegarde looked at her aunt with wide-open eyes.