Further investigation was the very last thing to cure it, she said to herself bitterly.

She looked piteously at her parent, but there she only saw an expression of concentrated purpose.
"Have you any reason, Alicia, to suspect an attachment--an affair of any kind ?" "Mamma!" "Do not jump in that excitable manner.

Think quietly.

He has evidently returned to Germany for some purpose which he wishes to conceal from us: the natural supposition is that a woman is at the bottom of it." "Rudolph is incapable----" "No man is incapable who is in the full possession of his faculties.

I know them perfectly." "But, mamma, I cannot bear to think of such a thing!" "That is a merely middle-class prejudice.