n she put on her hat and coat and stole out, afraid of disturbing
Susie, who was lying a few yards away filled with smouldering wrath,
anxious to have at least one quiet hour before beginning a day that she
felt sure was going to be a day of worries. "There will be great peace
to-night when she is gone," she thought, and immediately felt ashamed
that she should look forward to being without her. "But I have never
been without her since I was ten," she explained apologetically to her
offended conscience, "and I want to see how I feel."

"_Guten Morgen_," said Marie, as Anna came into the drawing-room on her
way out through its French windows.

"_Guten Morgen_," said Anna cheerfully.

Marie leaned on her broom and watched her go down the garden, greedily
taking in every detail of her clothes, profoundly interested in a being
who went out into the mud where nobody could see her with such a dress
on, and whose shoes would not have been too big for Marie's small sister
aged nine.

The evening before, indeed, Marie had beheld such a vision as she had
never yet in her life seen, or so much as imagined; her new mistress had
appeared at supper in what was evidently a _herrschaftliche Ballkleid_,
with naked arms and shoulders, and the other ladies were attired in much
the same way. The young Fraeulein, it is true, showed no bare flesh, but
even she was arrayed in white, and her hair magnificently tied up with
ribbons. Marie had rushed out to tell the cook, and the cook, refusing
to believe it, had carried in a supererogatory dish of compot as an
excuse for securing the assurance of her own eyes; and Bertha from the
farm, coming round with a message from the Frau Oberinspector, had seen
it too through the crack of the kitchen door as the ladies left the
dining-room, and had gone off breathlessly to spread the news; and the
post cart just leaving with the letters had carried it to Lohm, and
every inhabitant of every house between Kleinwalde and Stralsund knew
all about it before bedtime. "What did I tell thee, wife?" said Dellwig,
who, in spite of his superiority to the sex that served, listened as
eagerly as any member of it to gossip; and his wife was only too ready
to label Anna mad or eccentric as a slight private consolation for
having passed out of the service of a comprehensible German gentleman
into that of a woman and a foreigner.

Unconscious of the interest and curiosity she was exciting for miles
round, pleased by