and it was perhaps a useful kind of training for the young girl’s mind. Obliged to weigh every word before uttering it, Jenny Kuc̓erová learned many a lesson of wisdom in this school of life. She never felt her dependent position so painfully as on her visits to the old baroness the first of every month, when she had to bring her the written receipts for her twenty florins’ salary. On those occasions she never failed to carry away some sharp thorns in her heart. But, if need be, even thorns can be got over!
Jenny’s intercourse with Baron Edmund was, during the first year, confined to the mere interchange of common politeness. They took no more notice of each other than as absolutely unavoidable, although it did not escape Jenny’s sharp eyes that in unwatched moments the baron had to constrain himself somewhat in order to keep ithin the strict bounds of cool conventionalism presribed and observed in the family.
This set Jenny thinking about him. That he was living under an unnatural pressure on the part of his mother, and that the gallant, proud young man suffered under his pressure, was to Miss Jenny beyond all doubt. That he did not emancipate himself from this yoke by his own forts she considered to be the hereditary fault of all the male descendants of the house of Poc̓ernický, and a very contemptible fault too. According to her independent, girlish mind, a strong, healthy, intelligent young man, of insignificant social position, should be of an entirely different stamp. Still, she could not be angry with Baron Mundy; she felt rather sorry for him.
It could not but happen that in the course of the year she overheard much gossip, and many a truth too, about the members of the Poc̓ernický family. But with regard the young Baron Edmund there was but one opinion;
