The old baron rose from his chair, approached his wife, and kissed her tenderly on her forehead. "You must not give way to such thoughts, dear Anna Maria," he said most kindly. "God will not let me die so very soon; I pray every morning, and thank Him for every additional day which He grants me, not for my sake--for I am an old man and we must all of us die--but for your sake, because I know how much my death would grieve you, and also because I should like to see your and Helen's future secured before I die." The old man had resumed his seat, and taken a pinch from a gold snuff-box, which was standing near him on a small round table, in order the better to overcome the emotion into which he had talked himself; the baroness quietly resumed her work. "You are so kind," she said, "much too kind; for you are so even to those who do not deserve your kindness, and thus you prepare for yourself much trouble, which you might easily avoid by a little more--I will not say egotism, for I hate the word, but--discretion. Now you are concerned for my future and Helen's future--and justly so. This concern you would be relieved of if you had not leased your estates, when you fell heir to the entail twenty-four years ago, to people who have grown rich at your expense, and crown their impudence by accusing us of avarice, because we are unwilling to renew the leases on the same terms. And if you had not then assumed Harald's enormous debts--a thing I never understood, and never will understand--you would not have had to use for their payment all that we could save with the utmost economy." The old baron did not seem to relish the subject his wife had entered upon; he took one pinch after another while she was speaking, and at last he said, not without some animation: