"If you will allow me, I should like to pay my respects to Princess Ludwig before I go," he said, thinking thus to see her later. "Ah! wasn't I right?" she said, smiling. "You are determined to look at the new arrivals. How can a man be so inquisitive? But I will say good-night all the same. I shall be ages with Herr Dellwig, and shall not see you again." She shook hands with him, and went into the dining-room, Dellwig standing aside with deep respect to let her pass. But she turned to say something to him as he shut the door, and Axel caught the expression of her face, the intense boredom on it, the profound distrust of self; and he went in to the princess with an unusually severe and determined look on his own. Dellwig went home that night in a savage mood. "That young man," he said to his wife, flinging his hat and coat on to a chair and himself on to a sofa, "is thrusting himself more and more into our affairs." "That Lohm?" she asked, rolling up her work preparatory to fetching his evening drink. "I had almost got the Miss to consent to the brick-kiln. She was quite reasonable, and went out to get the plan I had made. Then she met him--he is always hanging about." "And then?" inquired Frau Dell wig eagerly. "Pah--this petticoat government--having to beg and pray for the smallest concession--it makes an honest man sick." "She will not consent?" "She came back as obstinate as a mule. It all had to be gone into again from the beginning." "She will not consent?" "She said Lohm would look at the place and advise her." "_Aber so was!_" cried Frau Dellwig, crimson with wrath. "Advise her? Did you not tell her that you were her adviser?" "You may be sure I did. I told her plainly enough, I fancy, that Lohm had nothing to say here, and that her uncle had always listened to me. She sat without speaking, as she generally does, not even looking at me--I never can be sure that she is even listening." "And then?" "I asked her at last if she had lost confidence in me." "And then?" "She said _oh nein_, in her affected foreign way--in the sort of voice that might just as well mean _oh ja_." And he imitated, with great bitterness, Anna's way of speaking German. "Mark my words, Frau, she is as weak as water for all her obstinacy, and the last person who talks to her can always bring her round." "Then you must be the last person." "If it were not for that prig Lohm, that interfering ass, that incomparable rhinoceros----" "He wants to marry her, of course." "If he marries her----" Dellwig stopped short, and stared gloomily at his muddy boots. "If he marries her----" repeated his wife; but she too stopped short. They both knew well enough what would happen to them if he married her.