"Chancellor’s duties!" The lady drummed on the diamond panes. "Oh, yes, my love, King Jerome requires onerous duties of his ministers, and I’ve no doubt that Ludovic performs his _con amore_.—How soon will you be eighteen?" she cried suddenly.
"Four months—an eternity! Alas, my love, long before that I shall have been laid in that hateful chapel of yours; in that very vault, no doubt, where lies my predecessor—that fool of a woman who resisted such a life as this for twenty years, and yet had the inconceivable want of tact to die at the very moment when I was ripe to fall a prey to the monster."
"Poor Aunt Hedwige!" said Sidonia, reflectively; "she was very fat and never unkind, and I don’t think she was unhappy."
"Ha!" muttered the Burgravine, vindictively, "I’ll warrant he might have brought her to Cassel with impunity."
"No, child," pursued the other, with much rancour, "woman’s place is at home, you see, while the man is abroad—aha!" She set her teeth and growled behind them like an angry Persian kitten. Then she snapped at her niece: "And you haven’t even the intelligence to be eighteen yet, and be of some use for once in your life! Yes, never look so astonished; you’re not a fool, child; you know that when you are eighteen, you will be free, and the richest woman in Thuringia—owner of half the wretched little province; free, girl, free to do as you like, to live where you like, to have your own establishment, to spend your own money—and then there’d be a chance for me! Ah, but you would not give it to me. You would let dear uncle manage as he’s always managed, and dole you out a thaler here and a louis there, and let him choose you a nice husband ... who would not look too much into the accounts, I’ll warrant."
"Aunt Betty!" panted Sidonia. The Burgravine stopped, slightly abashed by the fire that flashed in the child’s glance. "If you can’t forgive Uncle Ludo for being your husband, don’t forget that he is a man of honour...."
"Oh, patatata!" said the lady, with a shrug, "here’s mighty fine talk! Manage your own affairs, my dear. I’ll say no more."
She leaned her plump arms on the window-sill again and turned her back on her niece with an air of determined sullenness.