“Nobody has ever missed the money,” interposed Otto, smiling pitifully down on the costly rug at his feet.
“Ah, you say that! But I have often regretted that mamma’s fortune was not larger. Papa, you remember, had squandered his share. Your poor father might have got many things he had set his heart upon, and which now he is compelled to go without.”
“Yes,” said Otto, “the house would have been twice as full again.”
“Exactly. For instance, he has always longed, passionately, to possess a ‘Corot.’ He has never been able to procure one. There is a very good ‘Daubigny’ in the small drawing-room. By-the-bye, it is new; you must go and have a look at it presently. But the poor man has never ventured to buy a ‘Corot.’ I cannot help feeling it is almost my fault. Certainly grandpapa’s. Yet he was always so considerate to grandpapa after we took him to live with us, never reproaching him with word.”
Otto did _not_ ask, What is a ‘Corot’? He lay stroking his mother’s hand. Presently he started to his feet and walked towards the window.
“How beautiful it is!” he cried; “how lovely! Oh, mother, the sun-heat across the park!”
The little lady came dancing after him. “Yes, is it not exquisite?” she cried, standing close beside him. “Look at the patch of yellow color there, in the break between the beeches. Why, Otto, since when do you notice the merely beautiful? Do you see that far line of white roof with the sun full upon it? That is the gallery round the new Italian garden. Well, not exactly new, only you have been away such a very long time!”
She pressed his arm. “Now go down to your father,” she added, softly. “Ask him to show you the ‘Daubigny.’ And don’t talk to him of business. You know he doesn’t like it.”
“A fortune for a picture,” said Otto to himself as he closed his mother’s door, “while I was out in Java growing tea!”
He passed along a corridor which was hung with arms of all times and nations, into the large entrance-hall, a museum of old oak and heraldry among the masses of summer flowers.
There he found his father pacing impatiently to and fro. The old Baron, whose life motto had been “Tout s’arrange,” was only impatient about things of no importance. He was now eager to show his son the acquisitions of the last twelve years. He knew that the display would be productive of pleasure neither to himself nor to his heir, but he remained eager all the same.