Ingeborg had heard of her Swedish grandmother's will, but had long ago
forgotten it, marriage being remote and money never of any interest to
her who had no occasions for spending. Now her heart bounded with yet
more thankfulness. What a comfort it would be to Robert. How it would
help him in his research. Extraordinary that she should have forgotten
it. When he told her of his stipend of five thousand marks--£250 it was
in English money, he explained, and there was the house and land
free--most of which went in his experiments, but what was left being
ample, he said, for the living purposes of reasonable beings if they
approached it in a proper spirit, it all depending, he said, on whether
they approached it in a proper spirit. "And after all," he had added
triumphantly, throwing out his chest just as she was about to inquire
what the proper spirit was, "no man can call me _thin_--"--to think she
had forgotten the substantial help she was going to be able to bring
him!
The full splendour of her father's generosity in being pleased at her
engagement was now revealed to her. The relief of it. The glad, warm
relief. So must one feel who is born again, all new, all clean from old
mistakes and fears. She felt lifted up, extraordinarily happy,
extraordinarily good, more in harmony with Providence and the Bible than
she had been since childhood. She would have been willing, and indeed
found it perfectly natural, to kneel down with her mother and Judith
then and there and say prayers together out loud. She would have been
willing on the crest of her wave of gratefulness quite readily to give
up Herr Dremmel in return for the family's immense kindness in not
asking her to give him up. She had felt nothing like this exaltation
before in her life, this complete being in harmony with the infinite,
this confidence in the inherent goodness of things, except on the
afternoon her tooth was pulled out.
"Oh," she exclaimed, laying her cheek on her mother's hand, "oh, I do
_hope_ you'll like Robert!"
"Robert?" said Mrs. Bullivant; and at the tea-table there was a sudden
silence among the cups, as though they were holding their breath.
"His name's Robert," said Ingeborg, still with her cheek on her mother's
hand, her eyes shut, her face a vision of snuggest, safest contentment.
"What Robert, Ingeborg?" inquired Mrs. Bullivant, shifting her position
to stare down more conveniently at her daughter.
"Herr Dremmel. It's his Christian name. He's got to _have_ one, you
know," said Ingeborg, still with her eyes shut in the blissfulness of
perfect confidence.
"Herr who?" said Mrs. Bullivant, a sharper note of life in her voice
than there had been for years. "Here's your father," she added quickly,
hastily composing herself into the lines of the unassailable invalid
again as the door opened and the Bishop came in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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