Melitta von Berkow did not seem to be specially delighted with this evidence of the admirable memory of the baroness; she became restless, and asked, apparently without knowing what she was saying: "Have you heard from Oldenburg?" "The baron came back a week ago." "Oh!" cried Melitta, in a tone which made the baroness look up from her work. "What is the matter, Melitta?" "I am so awkward," said the latter, and pressed a tiny drop of blood from a finger of her left hand. "So Oldenburg is back again? What brings him back to us? Has he found Egypt as tiresome as our own country here?" "The contracts with his tenants expire next November, like some of our own. I presume that was the cause of his return. He seems to have become a greater misanthrope than ever. Griebenow, one of our men, met him in the forest; he has not been here yet." "Well, my dear Anna Maria, you will not mind, I am sure, that want of attention on his part; you never were very good friends, I believe." "I am not aware that Oldenburg ever desired to be a friend of mine. He never had any friends. A man who openly scoffs at all religion, who forgets the honor of his caste and the interests of his equals so far as to speak in the National Assembly and at every meeting in favor of all innovators; a man who apparently only comes among us in order to laugh at us--such a man has only to blame himself if we bestow our interest and our sympathy upon others who deserve it better." "Well, I should not have thought that he was ever made to feel the want of interest in himself. Nor will he be left without it now. I never could understand why all the world took so much trouble about a man who minds the world as little as he does." "That is easy of explanation, dear Melitta. The Oldenburgs are one of our oldest families; we cannot look on with indifference when the last scion of such a race becomes a plebeian." "Oldenburg will never be a plebeian," said the younger lady, with some warmth. "Why, dear Melitta, you take the baron's part very warmly. Would you also defend his immoral way of living, and his love affairs with which he has enriched the _chronique scandaleuse_ of this and other districts?" "I have never done anything immoral, as far as I know, nor approved of it," said the visitor, with greater heat than before. "And as for Baron Oldenburg's private life, I do not presume to judge it, because I know nothing of it. However," she continued, after a short pause and in a much quieter tone, "I should really be astonished if Oldenburg were such a Don Juan as people make him out to be. You must admit, my dear Anna Maria, that he has neither the beauty nor the address which are commonly expected in such a character?" "Now that is a point on which _I_ do not presume to judge," said the baroness, with an effort to be ironical. "I leave that to you young people."