The conversation, suitably to the season, turned on preserving. Frau von Neuhaus of Zubowen, a rotund sexagenarian with a greenish fringe-net over her tousled hair, had tried the new steam apparatus, and had found it, in spite of its apparent advantages, thoroughly unpractical. The Baroness von Krassow opposed this view in an exaggerated fatigued voice; and old Frau von Sembritzky, who, since the marriage of her son with little Meta Podewyl, was doing her very best to revive the tradition with regard to wicked mothers-in-law, glared about her wrathfully like a teased vulture through the bars of its cage, as if she suspected that some one cherished the design of ousting her from the seat of honour. Meta sat next her; the poor young thing pressed the old termagant's hand in hers in nervous awe, while, with a longing smile that threatened every minute to become tearful, she glanced across at the table for "young girls" from which she was banished for ever. The hostess herself had taken a place to the left of Felicitas. Bolt upright and stiff as a grenadier she sat there, and, though smiling down amiably on her neighbour, she kept watch that no stolen glances were exchanged between her and the gentlemen in the next room. But even Frau von Stolt had not the smallest fault to find to-day with the much-abused young woman. She appeared charmed with the conversation, and, like a pupil thirsting for knowledge, she put in shy little questions in the pauses. Only now and then did she cast a wandering look along the collection of famous racehorses. No one noticed how her arms stiffened as if with cramp, and her fingers clasped and unclasped convulsively. She had dared much, and the next few minutes would be pregnant with events. The ladies from Halewitz, as an understood thing, had not been invited. For the last two years every hostess in the neighbourhood had known that a meeting between Felicitas and any member of the Sellenthin family was something to be avoided. Otherwise the table consecrated to the young would have been less quiet, and enlivened by Hertha's sharp repartees. Amidst the young men, too, there prevailed a subdued, almost depressed tone. The admirers of Felicitas hung about the doorposts, and ogled her through the folds of the _portière_ in vain; for none had she to-day the old intense look and soft understanding smile. And as none of them could summon up the courage to penetrate to the corner sacred to chaperons, much that pressed for a solution had to remain unexplained. They wanted to know why for six weeks they had been ignored as if they didn't exist by the fair chatelaine of Uhlenfelde. They put their heads together, and exchanged observations with the naïve, unchaste laugh in which immature men of the world are accustomed to find vent for the illegal desires of their hearts.