Frau Goldmark recoiled. She had imagined that the information would be considered most piquant and gratifying, and behold, the result had been annihilation almost. Though Sara had walked away with such dignity, a most unpleasant sensation had taken possession of her. It was most unlike all she knew of Falkenberg that he should make such a vulgar remark as that would certainly have been; and yet the glibness with which Frau Goldmark had repeated it, staggered her. She stood, absently conversing with Ludwig Maas, the very man with whom she had acted in the picture, and was chiefly conscious of repenting bitterly that she had ever taken any part in the affair, and Herr Maas was wondering a little why Miss Ford, who, with all her dignity, had been so sociable and pleasant to him two days ago, should wear so cold and unapproachable an expression this evening, when Falkenberg came up to them. ‘Miss Ford,’ said he, ‘I have been talking to Frau Goldmark.’ ‘Indeed!’ was the frigid reply. ‘I had better go,’ decided Ludwig within himself; and with a murmured excuse he left them. ‘Yes,’ pursued Rudolf. ‘I saw that she had offended you by something she had said. She is a tiresome, vulgar little woman, who used to annoy me a good deal in former days when I had dealings with her husband.’ ‘I can quite imagine it,’ said Sara, ‘but as I feel quite indifferent towards her, we need not talk about her.’ There was a laugh in Falkenberg’s eyes as he said: ‘But I do not feel at all indifferent towards her, finding as I do, that she has been misrepresenting me to you.’ Sara’s face flushed, and her head was lifted again. ‘Pray let us leave the subject,’ she said. ‘No, I must ask you as a favour to hear me. Frau Goldmark has a way of putting the cart before the horse sometimes, which, if innocent, is still annoying. She told you that _I_ had said to Herr Lohe—something which, if I had said it, under the circumstances, would have been the height of impertinence, though the poor little woman seems to imagine that it was a charming compliment.’ ‘Well, and did you not say it?’ she asked, still in the same unapproachable manner. ‘Can you for a moment suspect me of it? I observed to Herr Lohe that it was a charming picture, upon which he threw up his hands, exclaiming, “_Ach! mein Herr_, it was always charming, but since one has seen Miss Ford in it, it is _à ravir_.”’ Sara smiled involuntarily. Herr Lohe was a well-known character in the Elberthal artist world. The words and the manner were so exactly his, that she could no longer have even a shade of doubt on the matter. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, all the stiffness melting suddenly from her attitude and expression, ‘for ever listening to such a story. It took me by surprise.’ ‘Now you look less terrible, and more human,’ he said, laughing; ‘less like those “snows so pure, those peaks so high,” to which the poet said he lifted “a hopeless eye.”’