CHAPTER VI
A mist lay over the town. But—or so said Herr Longuet, the livery man in John Street, as he himself drove the covered char-a-banc up to the door of the house in Meng Street: “The sun will be out before an hour is over”—which was most encouraging.
The Frau Consul, Antonie, Herr Permaneder, Erica, and Ida had breakfast together and gathered one after another, ready for the expedition, in the great entry, to wait for Gerda and Tom. Frau Grünlich, in a cream-coloured frock with a satin tie, looked her best, despite the loss of sleep the night before. Her doubts and fears seemed to be laid to rest, and her manner was assured, calm, and almost formal as she talked with their guest and fastened her glove-button. She had regained the tone of the old days. The well-known conviction of her own importance, of the weightiness of her own decisions, the consciousness that once more a day had come when she was to inscribe herself decisively in the family history—all this filled her heart and made it beat higher. She had dreamed of seeing that page in the family papers on which she would write down the fact of her bethrothal—the fact that should obliterate and make void the black spot which the page contained. She looked forward to the moment when Tom would appear and she would greet him with a meaning nod.
He came with his wife, somewhat tardily, for the young Frau Consul was not used to make such an early toilette. He looked well and happy in his light-brown checked suit, the broad revers of which showed the white waistcoat beneath; and his eyes had a smile in them as he noted Tony’s incomparably dignified mien. Gerda, with her slightly exotic,
