Through the winter Kurt Brenckenberg had lorded it, partly on the neighbouring estates, partly in his father's house, where he was dissatisfied with everything, and perpetually bullied and grumbled at his brothers and sisters. He drank, composed songs, made himself agreeable or arrogant according to the sex of his associates, borrowed where it was possible to borrow, and cut as elegant an appearance as was permitted by the increasing shabbiness of the last check suit supplied by Kessel and Munchmann of Unter-den-Linden, on credit to corps students. He got up private theatricals, contrived new figures for the cotillion, gave fencing lessons, and had understood on the whole how to make himself indispensable. Ladies gushed about him, but men rather avoided him, because if they so much as looked at him sideways, they were apt to be confronted with the disconcerting question, snapped out in tone of intimidation: "Will you give satisfaction?" Not that the sturdy young squires of the Hinterwald district were by any means cowards. On the contrary, they had proved often enough that they were ready where their honour was concerned to engage in any daring combat. It was only in the case of this little bristling fighting-cock, whom they regarded scarcely as their equal by half, that they felt stiff and embarrassed. Often as he boasted of his little adventures with pistols, he never gave a practical demonstration of anything of the sort. He it was who for the most part at the conclusion of the challenge formalities proved himself a model of wise moderation. But even this fact resulted in the increase of his reputation in the country-round, and made his pose as an irreconcilable combatant the more effective. For his part he felt it incumbent on him to continue the _rôle_ of the celebrated Dr. Oswald Stein, who two generations earlier had turned the heads of all the rustic young Pomeranian rustics, and he made no secret that the ideal on which he modelled himself was the hero of "Problematical Natures." Accordingly he had entered on a sentimental love episode with the pretty daughter of Halewitz, and by the spring hoped at last to have found his Melitta. For it was at about this time that Ulrich von Kletzingk summoned him to Uhlenfelde to act as private tutor to his little stepson. The boy was delicate, and not to be overworked. So he had all the more leisure at his disposal in which to pay court to the beautiful fair-haired mistress of the castle. It was patent that she was a flirt. How otherwise would she have kept dangling about her all the cavaliers, young and old, of the neighbourhood? She also had some sense. For she did what she pleased, quite unconcerned by the gossip of friendly neighbours. And the famous duel had proved that she was in possession of an interesting past.