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Updated: September 10, 2025
Douglas did not heed him, but sat down in the opposite corner, drawing Elsbeth to him. She looked pale and worn, and had a shy, timid manner, that might arise from her strange, unaccustomed surroundings. She nodded with a slight smile to Paul's mother and sisters, and looked at him with a meditative glance, which seemed to ask something. He lowered his eyes, for he could not bear her gaze.
She laughed again, and after a pause, said: "Elsbeth." "But I couldn't call you by your first name on our first meeting, you know." "Then you Americans are really so very formal eh?" she said slyly, looking at her imprisoned hand. "Well, yes," returned Hoffman, disengaging it. "I suppose we are respectful, or mean to be. But whom am I to inquire for? To write to?"
The twins were flying round the room, their curls were loose, and a wild light sparkled in their eyes. "Let them romp about," thought Paul, "they must return to misery soon enough." But that there was no misery for them never occurred to him. When Elsbeth was replaced at the piano by somebody else, she came towards him and said, "You are very much bored, are you not?" "Oh no," he said.
He could go from here to visit his mother on Sundays, or she could come to him. Elsbeth and Toni were so full of gratitude, they could find no words to express it, but the lady understood them nevertheless and bore home a happy heart, such as she had not had for a long time. It came about just as the doctor had foreseen.
Jacob asked stiffly. "You do that for your mother," said Mrs. Durrant, looking at him again keenly, as she transferred the skein. "Yes, it goes much better." He smiled; but said nothing. Elsbeth Siddons hovered behind them with something silver on her arm. "We want," she said. ... "I've come ..." she paused. "Poor Jacob," said Mrs. Durrant, quietly, as if she had known him all his life.
"How happy they look the sweet creatures," said Elsbeth. Paul gave them a little sermon. They scarcely heeded him, but looked over his shoulders, giggling. And when he turned round he saw the two Erdmanns, who had hidden behind the musicians' platform and were making clandestine signs to them. The twins by this time had escaped him, and the Erdmanns disappeared as well.
"He shall not harm you!" "Who?" she asked, with a shudder. "Father," he said, softly and hesitatingly. She sighed deeply but answered nothing, and silently and sadly they went on. The gray woman had flitted across their path and spoiled the moment of joy, and it was the only one that Fate had still in store for Frau Elsbeth. Next day there was a bad hour between herself and her husband.
"What can those foreign words be?" he asked himself, he would have liked to inquire of one of the gentlemen, but he was ashamed to betray his ignorance and so to disgrace his sisters. Elsbeth had gone away with the other girls, he would have liked best to confide in her.
The sun shone through the painted windows in a thousand bright colors, just as it did on the day when he and Elsbeth were confirmed; but there, too, sad and sombre in her ash-colored garments, stood the gray woman, still gazing down upon him with her big, hollow eyes.
"I have written to my friend, the Pastor, and asked him if the boy was very much attached to his mother, and if so, to send for her right away. Perhaps to see her again would make an impression on him." The two women looked forward in great suspense to Elsbeth's arrival. In the first week of September the last guests left the hotel in Interlaken where Elsbeth had spent the summer.
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