CHAPTER II
Through the open door Frau Permaneder could be seen praying in the chamber of death. She knelt there alone, at a chair near the bed, with her mourning garments flowing about her on the floor. While she prayed, her hands folded before her on the seat of the chair, she could hear her brother and sister-in-law in the breakfast-room, where they stood and waited for the prayer to come to an end. But she did not hurry on that account. She finished, coughed her usual little dry cough, gathered her gown about her, and rose from the chair, then moved toward her relatives with a perfectly dignified bearing in which there was no trace of confusion.
“Thomas,” she said, with a note of asperity in her voice, “it strikes me, that as far as Severin is concerned, our blessed mother was cherishing a viper in her bosom.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I am perfectly furious with her. I shall try to behave with dignity, but—has the woman any right to disturb us at this solemn moment by her common ways?”
“What has she been doing?”
“Well in the first place, she is outrageously greedy. She goes to the wardrobe and takes out Mother’s silk gowns, folds them over her arm, and starts to retire. ‘Why, Riekchen,’ I say, ‘what are you doing with those?’ ‘Frau Consul promised me.’ ‘My dear Severin!’ I say, and show her, in a perfectly ladylike way, what I think of her unseemly haste. Do you think it did any good? She took not only the silk gowns, but a bundle of underwear as well, and went out. I can’t come to blows with her, can I? And it isn’t Severin alone. There are wash-baskets full of stuff going out of
