"I should really be glad to have some intelligible explanation of the matter," Katrine says, with dignity.
"Oh, it is the merest trifle," the captain rejoins, changing colour, and tugging at his moustache.
"The affair is very simple, madame," Rohritz interposes. "Les felt it his duty, lately,--the day before yesterday, in fact,--to chastise an impertinent scoundrel in Hradnyk, and has conscientiously kept at home since, awaiting the fellow's challenge,--of course in vain. What he should have done would have been to emphasize in a note the box on the ear he administered."
"Yes, that's true," says the captain: "it is a pity that it did not occur to me."
Freddy has gradually subsided. As during his tearful misery he has done a great deal of rubbing at his eyes with inky fingers, his cheeks are now streaked with black, and he is sent off by his mother with a smile, in charge of a servant, to be washed.
"Might I be informed," she asks, after the door has closed upon the child, and with a rather mistrustful glance at her husband, "what the individual at Hradnyk did to provoke the chastisement in question?"
"'Tis not worth the telling, Katrine," stammers the captain. "Why should you care to know anything about it?"
"You are very wrong, Les, to make any secret of it," Rohritz interposes. "The scoundrel undertook to use certain expressions which irritated Les, with regard to you, madame."
"With regard to me?" Katrine exclaims, with a contemptuous curl of her lip. "What could any one say about me?"
"What, indeed?" the captain repeats. "Well, I will tell you all about it some time when we are alone, if you insist upon it. It was a silly affair altogether, but I took the matter to heart."
Rohritz has just turned to slip out of the room and leave the pair to a reconciliatory _tête-à-tête_, when the door opens, and a servant announces that the sleigh is ready.
"Where are you going?" Katrine asks, hastily, in an altered tone, as the servant withdraws.
"I was going to Glockenstein, to take the 'Maître de Forges' to the grass-widow; she asked me for it yesterday; but if you wish, Katrine, I will stay at home."
"If I wish," Katrine coldly repeats. "Since when have I attempted to interfere in any way with your innocent amusements?"