In former days this would have evidently been the privilege of Anna Maria, who enjoyed strife, and felt sure of victory. But strangely enough, husband and wife seemed recently to have exchanged parts. The baron was almost transformed since Bruno's death and Helen's departure from home. Formerly good-natured, yielding, and peaceful, he had become sensitive, grumbling, and obstinate. This change might have been in part the effect of his bad state of health and his decline, which had become very perceptible in the last weeks; but sometimes it looked as if the cause was a deeper one--as if the recent events had roused the old gentleman from his lethargy, and shown him many things and many persons in a very different light from that in which he had seen them before. He who had formerly hardly taken a glass of water without first consulting his Anna Maria, suddenly began to act for himself, even to think for himself, and to have positive views of his own, which he maintained with that obstinacy and pertinacity which is often observed in weak minds. He had had attacks of this obstinacy in former years also, but now the sporadic occurrences seemed to have changed into a chronic disease. People are apt to say of somebody who acts in an extraordinary manner, "he won't live long;" and if there is any reason for this assertion, the days of the baron must have been numbered. Perhaps this was really so, and the baron suspected it secretly, so that he made unheard-of efforts of his mind and his will, exactly as old, very sedate canary-birds are apt to hop about and to flutter with nervous violence a few minutes before composing themselves to sleep. Such a nervous violence characterized the manner in which the old gentleman, taking a pinch from his gold snuff-box, closed the top, and then said, as if Anna Maria had given him the cue just then, and not half an hour ago: "Stay! Everything must have an end; we cannot leave Helen forever at Miss Bear's." "I am not accustomed," replied Anna Maria, taking up her embroidery--she liked to be found busy at work when visitors came--"I am not accustomed to say one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow. Others may think differently about it. We would make ourselves ridiculous before the whole world if we were to take Helen back after four weeks." "It is nearly six weeks," growled the baron. "Four or six, that makes no difference." "It does for me. I am an old man; I may die to-morrow." "You have said so these ten years." "If I have said so for ten years," replied the baron, deeply offended by the indifference which lay in the words of his wife, "it is because I have not had a well day for ten years; and one of these days the morning will break when I am no more, and that is why I should like to have my daughter near me again as soon as possible."