"It's very funny!" Mrs. Vanderlyn said somewhat pettishly. "I could
have sworn, from the first time I saw your father on the steamer,
that he was a man of family."

"Of family? No; Mrs. Vanderlyn, I think not so."

"And he has never told you anything?"

"He has told me, sometimes, that by and by, when something happens
which he never will explain, we would go back to Germany."

The daily lesson in court German then went on. Mrs. Vanderlyn was
plainly disappointed at the meagreness of Anna's family history, and
did badly with her lesson; but she could not possibly complain. Anna
had made no claims. She had accepted her purely of her own--she did
not realize how much it, really, had been her son's--volition. Anna
had not asked for the position.

"I wonder," she was thinking, when she should have been absorbed in
conjugations, "if there can be the slightest danger in my having this
girl here. She's pretty and she has most charming manners. That accent
is too fascinating, too. John might--but then, he is a boy of too
much sense. If she only had been what I hoped she was, when I saw them
on the steamer--but a mere flute-player's daughter! He would never be
so silly."

On later days the lessons sometimes went with better speed and more
enthusiasm; but almost always Mrs. Vanderlyn was occupied with
thinking of the social life she knew and wished to know, so rapid
progress was not possible.