But that he hung on Cilia's arm when she had to go an errand in the evening, that he hurried after her when she only took a letter to the box, or that he brought her a chair when she wanted to sit with her mending-basket under the elderberry bush near the kitchen door was not to be tolerated. When Kate heard that Cilia had not gone further than the nearest pines on the edge of the wood when it was her Sunday out, and had sat there for hours with the boy on the grass, there was a scene. Cilia wept bitter tears. What had she done? She had only told Woelfchen about her home. "What's your home to him? He is to mind his own business and you yours." Kate was about to say still more, to cry out: "Leave off telling him your private concerns, I won't have it," but she controlled herself, although with difficulty. She could have boxed this round-cheeked girl's ears, as she looked at her so boldly with her bright eyes. Even Frida Laemke was preferable to her. But Frida did not show herself very often now. She already wore a dress that reached to her ankles, attended a sewing class out of school-hours, and after her confirmation, which was to be a year next Easter she was to go "to business," as she said very importantly. "I shall give her notice," said Kate one evening, when Cilia had cleared the table and she was sitting quite alone with her husband. "Oh!" He had not really been listening. "Why?" "Because of her behaviour." The woman's voice vibrated with suppressed indignation more than that, with passionate excitement. Her eyes, which were generally golden brown and gentle, became dark and sombre. "Why, you're actually trembling! What is the matter now?" He laid the paper he was about to read aside, quite depressed. There was some trouble with the boy again; nothing else excited her in that manner. "I can't have it any longer." Her voice was hard, had lost its charm. "And I won't stand it. Just think, when I came home to-day I was away an hour towards evening, hardly an hour good gracious, you cannot always be spying, you demean yourself in your own eyes." Her hands closed over each other, gripped each other so tightly that the knuckles showed quite white. "I had left him at his desk, he had so much to do, and when I returned not a stroke had been done. But I heard--heard them downstairs, at the back of the house near the kitchen door." "Heard whom?" "Wolfgang and her, of course--Cilia. I had only been away quite a short time." "Well--and then?" She had stopped and sighed, full of a deep distress which drove away the anger from her eyes. "He put his arms round her neck from behind. And he kissed her. 'Dear Cillchen,' he said. And she drew him towards her, took him almost on her lap--he is much too big for that, much too big--and spoke softly to him the whole time." "Did you understand what she said?"