I find myself in a similar situation to you. I have been imposing the same restraint upon myself as I now require you to exercise.’

‘I am delighted to hear it,’ said Eduard. ‘I see it is a good thing for husband and wife to have the occasional disagreement, since they thereby come to learn things about one another.’

‘Well then,’ said Charlotte, ‘you shall now come to learn that my sentiments towards Ottilie are the same as yours towards the Captain. I do not like to think of the dear child at the boarding-school. She finds conditions there grievously oppressive. My daughter Luciane was born to live in the world and there she is learning to live in the world. She takes in her languages and her history, and whatever else they teach her, as easily as her piano-playing. With her vivacious nature and lively memory she can, one might almost say, forget everything one minute and remember it again the next. She excels all the others in the freedom of her deportment, the gracefulness of her dancing, the becoming ease of her conversation, and through an innately commanding personality she has made herself queen of her little circle. The headmistress of the establishment regards her as a little goddess who is blossoming only now under her care and who will bring her credit and the confidence of others, which will produce an influx of more young ladies into her school. The opening pages of her letters and monthly reports are never anything but hymns to the excellence of such a child, which I of course know how to translate into my own prose. But when she finally comes to speak of Ottilie there is only excuse upon excuse that a girl otherwise evolving so well should have no wish to develop her talents or display any accomplishments. The little she adds to this is likewise no puzzle to me, since I perceive in the dear child the entire character of her mother, who was my closest friend and grew up beside me and whose daughter I would certainly have made into a lovely creature if I could have had her care and education in my charge.

‘But since that does not accord with our plans, and one ought not to be for ever chopping and changing and introducing novelties, I prefer to endure the present state of affairs, and I even overcome the unpleasant feeling it gives me when my daughter, who knows very well that poor Ottilie is totally dependent upon us, haughtily parades her advantages before her, and so to some extent nullifies our kindness.

‘Yet who is sufficiently cultivated not to make his superiority over another sometimes cruelly evident? Who is sufficiently elevated not to have to suffer sometimes under such behaviour? These trials only enhance Ottilie’s worth; but since I have come clearly to see the painful position she is in, I have been making efforts to have her transferred somewhere else. I expect a reply hourly, and when it comes I shall not delay. So that, my love, is how I am placed. We both, you see, bear similar sorrows in a kind and loyal heart. Let us bear them together since they do not cancel one another out.’

‘What strange creatures we are,’ Eduard said, smiling. ‘If we can only banish from our sight whatever gives us sorrow we believe we have abolished it. In big affairs we are capable of great sacrifice, but to give way on some single issue is a demand we are seldom equal to. That is how my mother was. As long as I lived with her as a boy or a youth she was never free of apprehensions. If I was late home, I must have met with an accident; if I got soaked in a shower, I was certain to catch a fever. And when I journeyed away from her it was as if I scarcely belonged to her any more.

‘If we consider it more closely,’ he went on, ‘we are both acting in a highly irresponsible and foolish manner to leave in misery and oppression two of the noblest natures on earth, who are moreover so close to our hearts, merely so as not to expose ourselves to danger. If this should not be called selfishness I know not what should! Take Ottilie, let me have the Captain, and in God’s name let us make a trial of it!’

‘We might well venture to do so,’ Charlotte said doubtfully, ‘if the danger were to us alone. But do you consider it advisable to have the Captain and Ottilie sharing the same roof, a man of about your age, of the age – I may flatter you with this only because we are quite alone – at which a man first becomes capable of love and worthy of love, and a girl with Ottilie’s advantages?’

‘I really cannot see why you have so high an opinion of Ottilie!’ Eduard replied. ‘I can explain it only by supposing she has inherited your affection for her mother. It is true she is pretty, and I recall that the Captain pointed her out to me when we came back a year ago and met her with you at your aunt’s. She is pretty, she possesses in particular lovely eyes; yet I cannot say she made the least impression on me.’

‘That is very commendable in you,’ said Charlotte, ‘for I was there too, was I not? Although she is far younger than I, yet the presence of your more elderly friend charmed you so thoroughly you overlooked the beauty that was yet in bud. This too is part of what you are like and why I am so happy to share my life with you.’

Charlotte gave the impression of talking very frankly and openly, but she was keeping something concealed, and that was that she had deliberately produced Ottilie in front of Eduard when he came back so as to throw so advantageous a match in the way of her foster-daughter. At that time she no longer thought of Eduard in connection with herself.