His last words had a magical effect upon the baron, who bowed his head on his breast and stood for a time as if lost in thought. Not until the servant entered and announced that the carriage was ready and the horse saddled did he rouse himself, and, with an imperious gesture that indicated they were no longer wanted, he walked without a glance at any one, with slow, heavy steps, to his room. The roast meat, which meantime had grown cold, was left untouched on the table. The mistress of the house, after remaining for a time lost in sorrowful thought, followed her husband; the children, completely puzzled, had withdrawn into a window-niche. When the Frenchwoman, with a disagreeable smile intended to be amiable, addressed a remark to me containing the words _horreur_ and _deplorable_, I made a very uncourteous gesture, as though brushing off a buzzing hornet, and hurried into the park after Uncle Joachim. * * * * * I found him where I sought him, but his surroundings looked very different from usual on the cozy Sunday afternoons. Nothing was in order in the room, which had never seemed to me so shabby and unhomelike; the fly-specks had not been washed from the glass over the engravings, and the coffee-service was not on the table. Diana was lying in the middle of the unmade bed, and only lifted her head from her fore-paws to yawn at me. Her master, who usually dressed himself very carefully for this coffee-hour, was pacing up and down with folded arms, in his shirtsleeves, and slippers down at the heel, smoking his short pipe as fiercely as if he meant, in defiance of the sunshine streaming through the little window, to intrench himself behind an impenetrable cloud. "Pardon me if I disturb you," I said, as he stopped and glared angrily at me as though I were a total stranger; "but I can not bear to stay alone with my own thoughts among people who either make scornful comments on the misfortune in private or openly exult over it. And altogether--I can't yet believe it. Tell me honestly, Herr Baron; do _you_ believe it? Do _you_ understand it?" "Nonsense!" he growled. "Believe what? 'Long hair and short wits'--that's all we need know to marvel at nothing one of _that_ sex does, even if she were the best of them all. Have you come, too, to fill my ears with lamentations? I have enough to do to swallow my own bile." He began to puff out the smoke again, and resumed his walk as if he had said enough to induce me to beat a discreet retreat. But I did not stir. "Oh, Herr Baron, don't send me away without any comfort, any explanation. You know more about the matter than any other person; you said you had known this--this Herr Spielberg. Do you really believe that she has followed him, that--that she has not merely suggested the horrible idea of becoming his wife as a threat, an alarm-shot, but will seriously persist in it?"