d won't confess? Yet I don't think
so. Queer old stick.'

'By-the-bye, what _is_ his age?' asked Alma unconcernedly.

'Thirty-seven or eight. But I always think of him as fifty.'

'I suppose he'll never marry?'

'Rolfe? Good heavens, no! Too much sense--hang it, you know what I
mean! It would never suit _him_. Can't imagine such a thing. He gets
more and more booky. Has his open-air moods, too, and amuses me with
his Jingoism. So different from his old ways of talking; but I didn't
care much about him in those days. Well, now, look here, I've had a
talk with a man I know, about Honolulu, and I've got all sorts of
things to tell you.--Dinner? Very glad; I'm precious hungry.'

CHAPTER 7

About the middle of December, Alma Frothingham left England, burning
with a fever of impatience, resenting all inquiry and counsel, making
pretence of settled plans, really indifferent to everything but the
prospect of emancipation. The disaster that had befallen her life, the
dishonour darkening upon her name, seemed for the moment merely a price
paid for liberty. The shock of sorrow and dismay had broken innumerable
bonds, overthrown all manner of obstacles to growth of character, of
power. She gloried in a new, intoxicating sense of irresponsibility.
She saw the ideal life in a release from all duty and obligation--save
to herself.

Travellers on that winter day from Antwerp into Germany noticed the
English girl, well dressed, and of attractive features, whose excited
countenance and restless manner told of a journey in haste, with
something most important, and assuredly not disagreeable, at the end of
it. She was alone, and evidently quite able to take care of herself.
Unlike the representative English _Fraulein_, she did not reject
friendly overtures from strangers; her German was lame, but she spoke
it with enjoyment, laughing at her stumbles and mistakes. With her in
the railway carriage she kept a violin-case. A professional musician?
'Noch nicht' was her answer, with a laugh. She knew Leipzig? Oh dear,
yes, and many other parts of Germany; had travelled a good deal; was an
entirely free and independent person, quite without national prejudice,
indeed without prejudice of any kind. And in the same breath she spoke
slightingly, if not contemptuously, of England and everything English.

At Leipzig she stayed until the end of April, living with a family
named Gassner, people whom she had known for some years. Only on