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We finished our dinner in dead silence, and I was going up to my room when the Grafin's maid came after me and said would I go to her mistress. She was alone in the drawingroom, sitting at her writing table, though she wasn't writing, and when I came in she said, without turning round, that she must ask me to leave her house at once, that very evening.
But after reading the Grafin's letter I was treated more nearly as an equal, and she became all interest and co-operation.
A casual question of mine about the game conditions elicited from him the information that he was an under-keeper at the Castle. It was a busy time for them, he told me, as four big shoots had been arranged. The first was to take place the next day. There were plenty of birds, and he thought the Frau Gräfin's guests ought to be satisfied.
The Grafin's smart cousin got us on to some steps and stood with us, so that we should not be pushed off them instantly again, as we would have been if he had left us.
He had arrived in Berlin by the time we got here, and the Grafin's triumphant calm visibly increased when the footman who met us at the station eagerly told her the news. For this, as the papers said that evening, hardly able to conceal their joy beneath their pious hopes that the horrors of war may even yet be spared the world, reveals the full seriousness of the situation.
I couldn't argue, as I would have if I'd still been a boarder, which was a pity, for meanwhile I've learned a lot of German and could have said a great many things and been as natural as I liked here away from the Grafin's gentle smile reminding me that I'm not behaving.
Barlasch was cleaning a knife, and nodded a silent good morning. Desiree's eyes were red, and Barlasch must have noted this sign of grief, for he gave a contemptuous laugh, and continued his occupation. It was barely daylight when the Grafin's heavy, old-fashioned carriage drew up in front of the house. Mathilde came down, thickly veiled and in her travelling furs.
So we had the happiest morning wandering about the forest, he driving and letting the horses go as slowly as they liked while we talked, and after our sandwiches he took me back to the Bornsteds, and I showed Frau Bornsted the Grafin's letter.
Some women friends of the Grafin's who were here we had no men with us instantly left to drive by back streets to the Schlossplatz to see the sight it must be there, and the Grafin, saying that we too must witness the greatest history of the world's greatest nation in the making, sent for a taxi her chauffeur has gone and prepared to follow.
I hadn't read the Austrian note, because of the confusion of Bernd's sudden going away, and I was full of indignation at Servia's behaviour, piling insult on injury in this way and risking setting Europe by the ears, but was pulled up short and set thinking by the Grafin's looking pleased at my expressions of indignation, and her coming over to me to pat my cheek and say, "This child will make an excellent little German."
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