"Would you like to see my beehives, Mr. Jager?" said the baron.
"With the greatest pleasure," replied the latter, taking his hat and cane.
"Don't stay away too long," said the baroness, "we shall have a little supper.--_Que voulais-je dire? Ah oui! Du chocolat, mais pas si énormément sucré que la dernière fois et prenez garde_, ..."
The evening had come, and with it Mrs. Jager, in the one-horse chaise. Primula wore the same dress of raw silk in which she had appeared to Oswald last Sunday, and, fatigued as she was by the great heat of the day, she looked more than ever like a sick canary-bird. Her husband had taken the first opportunity, after the long-winded greeting between her and the baroness was finished, to whisper to her, that it would be better not to appear too enthusiastic about her new friend. He told her that the young man seemed by no means to enjoy the favor of the baron and the baroness in a very high degree--a piece of news which so astounded the "dweller in higher regions," that she was hardly able to return Oswald's salutation when he appeared in the parlor, shortly before supper was announced.
Oswald's good-humor would have probably been excited by this strange conduct of his enthusiastic hostess of the Sunday before, if he had only become aware of it. But unfortunately he was in that state of mind in which, as Oldenburg said, we have eyes and ears wide open without seeing or hearing anything. The shadow of the events of the last day and last night were still lying on his soul and on his brow. His usual vivacity had given way to melancholy calmness; he looked pale and thoughtful, but so very handsome and distinguished, that Primula's delicate soul began once more to feel the charm which the young stranger had exercised on his first meeting with her. She forgot, thus, the warning of her husband all the more completely, as she noticed the particular courtesy with which the baroness and her husband treated the man who had just now been denounced to her as a fallen greatness. She was in her heart preparing a sermon which she was to deliver to Mr. Jager on their return journey, because he had, as usually, not seen "the forest amid so many trees." The worthy minister was himself, at first, not a little disconcerted by the contrast between the words and the actions of the baroness. But he knew better than anybody else that men do not always appear such as they really are, and that they are not always what they seem to be; he thought it best, therefore, faithfully to imitate the manner of his patroness, an effort which was not difficult for such a master in the noble art of hypocrisy.
