I'll go and fetch Heine.'
'What a very agreeable person Mr. Hammond is,' said Fraeulein, when he
was gone. 'We shall quite miss him.'
'Yes, I have no doubt we shall miss him,' said Lesbia, again without the
faintest emotion.
The governess began to think that the ordeal of an agreeable young man's
presence at Fellside had been passed in safety, and that her pupil was
unscathed. She had kept a close watch on the two, as in duty bound. She
knew that Hammond was in love with Lesbia; but she thought Lesbia was
heart-whole.
Mr. Hammond came back with a shabby little book in his hand and
established himself comfortably in one of the two Beaconsfield chairs.
He opened his book at that group of short poems called Heimkehr, and
read here and there, as fancy led him. Sometimes the strain was a
love-song, brief, passionate as the cry of a soul in pain; sometimes the
verses were bitter and cynical; sometimes full of tenderest simplicity,
telling of childhood, and youth and purity; sometimes dark with hidden
meanings, grim, awful, cold with the chilling breath of the
charnel-house.
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