From the first moment she and Crammon found themselves hopelessly at odds. She clasped her hands in despair over everything he said, and all his doings enraged her. With her feminine instinct she scented in him the adversary of all her cunning plans; he saw in her another of those arch enemies that, from time to time, spun for one of his friends the net of marriage.
She asked him to dine merely because of Letitia’s insistence. The girl explained: “Even if you don’t like him in other ways, aunt, you’ll approve of him as a guest. He’s very like you in one way.” But Crammon’s dislike of the countess robbed him of his usual appetite, so that the reconciliation even on that plane did not occur. She herself ate three eggs with mayonnaise, half of a duck, a large portion of roast beef, four pieces of pastry, a plate full of cherries, and additional trifles to pass the time. Crammon was overwhelmed.
After each course she washed her hands with meticulous care, and when the meal was over drew her snow-white gloves over her little, round fingers.
“All people are pigs,” she declared. “Nothing they come in contact with remains clean. I guard myself as well as I can.”
Letitia sat through it all smiling in her own arch and tender way, and her mere presence lent to the common things about her a breath of romance.
Her estate having finally been sold at auction, and she herself being quite without means, Frau von Febronius had gone to live with her younger sister at Stargard in Pomerania. In order to spare her daughter the spectacle of that final débâcle she had sent the girl to the countess in Weimar.
The three sisters were all widowed. The one in Stargard had been married to a circuit judge named Stojenthin. She lived on her government pension and the income of a small fortune that had been her dowry. She had two sons who strolled through the world like gipsies, wrapped their sloth in a loud philosophy, and turned to their aunt the countess whenever they were quite at the end of all their resources.
The countess yielded every time. Both young men knew the style of letter-writing that really appealed to her. “They will get over sowing their wild oats,” said the countess. She had been awaiting that happy consummation for years, and in the meantime sent them food and money.