more into our affairs."

"That Lohm?" she asked, rolling up her work preparatory to fetching his
evening drink.

"I had almost got the Miss to consent to the brick-kiln. She was quite
reasonable, and went out to get the plan I had made. Then she met
him--he is always hanging about."

"And then?" inquired Frau Dell wig eagerly.

"Pah--this petticoat government--having to beg and pray for the smallest
concession--it makes an honest man sick."

"She will not consent?"

"She came back as obstinate as a mule. It all had to be gone into again
from the beginning."

"She will not consent?"

"She said Lohm would look at the place and advise her."

"_Aber so was!_" cried Frau Dellwig, crimson with wrath. "Advise her?
Did you not tell her that you were her adviser?"

"You may be sure I did. I told her plainly enough, I fancy, that Lohm
had nothing to say here, and that her uncle had always listened to me.
She sat without speaking, as she generally does, not even looking at
me--I never can be sure that she is even listening."

"And then?"

"I asked her at last if she had lost confidence in me."

"And then?"

"She said _oh nein_, in her affected foreign way--in the sort of voice
that might just as well mean _oh ja_." And he imitated, with great
bitterness, Anna's way of speaking German. "Mark my words, Frau, she is
as weak as water for all her obstinacy, and the last person who talks to
her can always bring her round."

"Then you must be the last person."

"If it were not for that prig Lohm, that interfering ass, that
incomparable rhinoceros----"

"He wants to marry her, of course."

"If he marries her----" Dellwig stopped short, and stared gloomily at
his muddy boots.

"If he marries her----" repeated his wife; but she too stopped short.
They both knew well enough what would happen to them if he married her.

The building of the brick-kiln had come to be a point of honour with the
Dellwigs. Ever since Anna's arrival, their friends the neighbouring
farmers and inspectors had been congratulating them on their complete
emancipation from all manner of control; for of course a young ignorant
lady would leave the administration of her estate entirely in her
inspector's hands, confining her activities, as became a lady of birth,
to paying the bills. Dellwig had not doubted that this would be so, and
had boasted loudly and continually of the different plans he had made
and was going to carry out. The estate of w