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Fafner was the name that Madame von Marwitz gave to her moods of sometimes tragic and sometimes petulant melancholy. Karen had told him all about Fafner and how, in the cave, Tante would lie sometimes for long hours, silent, her eyes closed, holding her hand; sometimes asking her to read to her, English, French, German or Italian poetry; their range of reading always astonished Gregory.

If the sun was very inviting in the morning, lessons would wait until afternoon; or, if, sitting straight and still in the big room her father called his study, Keineth found it impossible to think of the book before her, Tante would say in her prim voice: "Dreaming, cherie?" and add, "the books will wait!"

Here they lived almost alone, for Lysbeth's countrymen and women showed their disapproval of her conduct by avoiding her company, and, for reasons of his own, Montalvo did not encourage the visiting of Spaniards at his house. Moreover, the servants were changed, while Tante Clara and the girl Greta had also disappeared.

She was married to a man who was hostile to what until he had come had been the dearest thing in her life. She had taken to her heart something that killed its very pulse. How could she love a man who looked such things at Tante who thought such things of Tante? How love him without disloyalty to the older tie?

"But no, Tante, it is not silly; it is very touching, I think; and you have liked pink roses sometimes. It makes me sorry for that good little lady that you shouldn't even look at her roses." "No. I see her. Dark red and very foolish. I do not like her or her flowers. They look stupid flowers thick and pink, like fat, smiling cheeks. Take them away."

But listen, p'tite tante," clasping her arms suddenly round Angela's neck, "I won't leave this spot till you have promised to change your mind about Denzil. I like him vastly; and I'm sure there's no reason why you should not love him unless you really are his lordship's adoring slave," emphasising those last words, "and he has forbidden you." Angela sat dumb, her eyes fixed on vacancy.

"You are right, I think, and so does Tante, evidently," Karen continued, "about the tempo rubato in the Mozart. It is strange that Monsieur Ivanowski doesn't feel it." "Ah! but that is it, he does feel it; it is only that he does not think it," said Herr Lippheim, now running his fingers through his hair. "Hear him play the Mozart. He then contradicts in his music all that his words have said."

And thus it came to pass that through the irresistible management of Miss O'Donoghue, who put into the promotion of her scheme all the energy belonging to her branch of the family, together with the long habit of authority of the Tante

It clung to her and prayed; and the realisation of her own need, her own dependence, was a new thing. She had never before felt dependence on Tante as anything but proud and glad.

Daddy had read to her of the suffering in Europe as a result of the great war, but it seemed hard to picture prim Tante in the midst of it perhaps working in the fields and factories, as Daddy said some of the women and children were doing.