his time with Hilda he would have asked his father's permission to take
his knapsack and go for a walking expedition in Switzerland, on the
chance of falling in with a fellow-student. He had noticed the change
in his mother from the first, and asked her daily if she were not
better. Clara would not admit that she was ill, but she looked at Greif
with an expression to which he was not accustomed and which made him
nervous. Hitherto he had never quite known whether she loved him or
not. She had spoiled him as much as she dared when he was a child, but
there had always been something in her way of indulging him which, even
to the little boy, had not seemed genuine. Children rarely love those
who spoil them, and never trust them. Their keen young sense detects
the false note in the character, and draws its own conclusions, which
are generally very just. Greif had found out when he was very young
that his mother gave him everything he asked for, not because she loved
him, but because she was too weak to refuse, and too indolent to care
for the result. He had found her inaccurate in what she told him, and
negligent in fulfilling the little promises upon which a child builds
such great hopes, though she was always ready to pay damages for her
forgetfulness by excessive indulgence in something else, when it was
agreeable to her. Greif had discovered that his father rarely promised
him anything, but that if he did, it was something worth having, and
that he was scrupulously exact in keeping his word about such matters,
even at the expense of his own convenience. He consequently admired his
father and was proud to imitate him; whereas he very soon learned to
consider his mother as a person of inferior intelligence, who did not
know enough to be accurate, and who did not respect herself enough to
fulfil her promises. But for his father's influence he would probably
have ended by showing what he felt. Greifenstein, however, exacted from
him an unvarying reverence and courtesy towards his mother, and never,
even in moments of the greatest confidence, permitted the boy to