The quietly observant child was directing the steward merely by glances and gestures and everything was going splendidly, even though a couple of the liveried servants were new and awkward.

And so, oblivious of Charlotte’s effort to change the subject, the Count went on talking about marriage. As a rule he was in no way given to monopolizing the conversation, but this theme weighed too heavily on his heart, and the difficulties living apart from his wife involved him in had embittered him against everything connected with the marriage tie, although this did not prevent his very keenly desiring to marry the Baroness.

‘That friend of mine,’ he went on, ‘made a further suggestion for a marriage law. He suggested a marriage should be regarded as indissoluble only if both parties or at any rate one of them marries a third time. A person who marries three times incontestably confesses that for him or her marriage is something indispensable. It would already be known from how he or she had behaved in previous marriages whether or not the party possessed those qualities which often give more cause for separation than do downright bad qualities. Reciprocal inquiries would have to be made. You would have to keep as close an eye on the married as on the unmarried, because you could never know how each case would turn out.’

‘That would certainly make society more interested in us,’ said Eduard. ‘As things are now, once we are married no one bothers himself further about either our virtues or our shortcomings.’

‘Under such an arrangement,’ the Baroness interposed, smiling, ‘our dear host and hostess would already have surmounted two stages with flying colours, and could be preparing for the third.’

‘They have been fortunate,’ said the Count. ‘Death has done for them what the courts are usually reluctant to do.’

‘Let us leave the dead alone,’ said Charlotte, not altogether in jest.

‘Why,’ the Count replied, ‘when we can think nothing but good of them? They were modest enough to content themselves with a few years of life in return for the manifold good things they left behind them.’

‘Which would be very fine,’ said the Baroness with a suppressed sigh, ‘if it were not that in such cases it is the best years of life that have to be sacrificed.’

‘True,’ replied the Count; ‘it would reduce you to despair were it not that in this world in general so little turns out as you hope it will. Children do not fulfill their promise; young people do so very rarely, and when they do keep their word the world does not keep its word to them.’

Charlotte, who was glad the conversation had taken another direction, replied cheerfully: ‘Well, we are in any case compelled soon enough to take the good things of life in bits and pieces and learn to enjoy them in that condition.’

‘Certainly you two have enjoyed some good times,’ the Count replied. ‘When I think back to the years you and Eduard were the handsomest couple at court! Such brilliant times and such fine people are a thing of the past now. When you danced together all eyes were on you. And how you were sought after, while you had eyes only for one another!’

‘Since so much is changed,’ said Charlotte, ‘perhaps we can accept such compliments without immodesty.’

‘I have often thought Eduard was to blame for not being more persistent,’ said the Count. ‘His eccentric parents would have given in in the end, and to gain ten years of youth is no small thing.’

‘I must defend him,’ the Baroness interposed. ‘Charlotte was not entirely free from blame, not entirely innocent of looking elsewhere. And even though she was in love with Eduard and had secretly determined to make him her husband, yet I was myself a witness to how much she sometimes tormented him, so that it was not hard to persuade him to his unhappy decision to travel and get away and get used to being without her.’

Eduard nodded to the Baroness and seemed grateful she was speaking up for him.

‘But I have to say one thing on Charlotte’s side,’ she went on. ‘The man who was courting her at that time had long demonstrated his affection for her, and when you got to know him better was certainly a nicer person than you others are willing to admit.’

‘Well, my dear,’ said the Count rather briskly, ‘let us also admit that you were not totally indifferent to him, and that Charlotte had more to fear from you than from anyone else. It is a very attractive trait in women that once they have become attached to a man they retain that attachment for so long and do not allow any sort of separation from him to disturb or destroy it.’

‘Perhaps men possess this fine quality to an even greater degree,’ the Baroness replied. ‘In any event, I have noticed in your case, dear Count, that no one has more power over you than a woman for whom you once felt an affection. I have seen you go to more trouble to accommodate such a woman than your friend of the moment could perhaps have persuaded you to do.’

‘If that is a reproach it is one that can be borne lightly,’ the Count replied. ‘So far as Charlotte’s first husband is concerned, the reason I did not like him was that he broke up that handsome couple, a couple truly predestined for each other who, once united, had no need to fear a five-year period or think about a second marriage, not to speak of a third.’

‘We shall try to make up in the future for what we have neglected in the past,’ said Charlotte.

‘You must hold to that,’ said the Count, ‘because your first marriages,’ he went on with some vehemence, ‘were so completely marriages of the rotten sort, and unfortunately marriages in general have about them something – excuse the expression – doltish: they ruin the tenderest relationships and the only real reason they exist is so that at any rate one of the parties may pride himself on a crude sense of security. Everything is taken for granted and the people involved seem to have got married only so that they may thereafter go their own way.’

At this moment Charlotte, who was now determined to change the subject once and for all, broke in with a bold expression which had the desired effect. Conversation became more general, both couples and the Captain could now take part in it, even Ottilie was given occasion to speak, and the dessert was enjoyed in the best of moods, in the production of which the wealth of fruit in decorated baskets and the abundance of flowers in display vases made the principal contribution.

The new park also came in for discussion. After the meal they went to see it. Ottilie stayed behind, saying she had things to do in the house. What she really did was go and get on with her copying. The Count was entertained by the Captain; later Charlotte joined him. When they had reached the top of the hill and the Captain had obligingly hurried back to fetch the map, the Count said to Charlotte: ‘I am extraordinarily impressed by that man. He is very well informed, in details and in the thing as a whole. He works very seriously and his work is very logically thought out.