"The man is quite beyond your control," said Axel in a voice of anger; and voices of anger commonly being loud voices, this one produced the effect of three doors being simultaneously opened: the door leading to the servants' quarters, through which Marie looked and vanished again, retreating to the kitchen to talk prophetically of weddings; the dining-room door, behind which Dellwig had grown more and more impatient at being kept waiting so long; and the drawing-room door, on the other side of which the baroness had been lingering for some moments, desiring to go upstairs for her scissors, but hesitating to interrupt Anna's business with the inspector, whose voice she thought it was that she heard. The baroness shut her door again immediately. "_Aha_--the admirer!" she said to herself; and went back quickly to her seat. "The Miss is talking to a _jünge Herr_," she announced, her eyes wider open than ever. "A _jünge Herr_?" echoed Frau von Treumann. "I thought the inspector was old?" "It must be Axel Lohm," said the princess, not raising her eyes from her work. "He often comes in." "He comes courting, evidently," said the baroness with a sub-acid smile. "It has not been evident to me," said the princess coldly. "I thought it looked like it," said the baroness, with more meekness. "Is that the Lohm who was engaged to one of the Kiederfels girls some years ago?" asked Frau von Treumann. "Yes, and she died." "But did he not marry soon afterwards? I heard he married." "That was the second brother. This one is the eldest, and lives next to us, and is single." Frau von Treumann was silent for a moment. Then she said blandly, "Now confess, princess, that _he_ is the perilous person from whom you think it necessary to defend Miss Estcourt." "Oh no," said the princess with equal blandness; "I have no fears about him." "What, is he too possessed of an invulnerable heart?" "I know nothing of his heart. I said, I believe, adventurers. And no one could call Axel Lohm an adventurer. I was thinking of men who have run through all their own and all their relations' money in betting and gambling, and who want a wife who will pay their debts." "_Ach so_," said Frau von Treumann with perfect urbanity. And if this talk about protecting Miss Estcourt from adventurers in a place where there were apparently no human beings of any kind, but only trees and marshes, might seem to a bystander to be foolishness, to the speakers it was luminousness itself, and in no way increased their love for each other. Meanwhile Dellwig, looking through the door and seeing Lohm, brought his heels together and bowed with his customary exaggeration. "I beg a thousand times pardon," he said; "I thought the gracious Miss was engaged and would not return, and I was about to go home." "I have found the paper, and am coming," said Anna coldly. "Well, good-night," she added in English, holding out her hand to Axel.