Days and weeks were spent in reconciling them a little; days passed with a pencil and scribbled slips of paper--the lines written with regular commencements and irregular terminations; you know them.

Why had Ottilia fainted?
She recommended hard study--thinks me idle, worthless; she has a grave intelligence, a serious estimation of life; she thinks me intrinsically of the value of a summer fly.

But why did she say, 'We change countries,' and immediately flush, break and falter, lose command of her English, grow pale and swoon; why?
With this question my disastrous big heart came thundering up to the closed doors of-comprehension.

It was unanswerable.

'We change countries.' That is, she and Miss Sibley change countries, because the English woman marries a German, and the German princess--oh! enormous folly.