Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/163

 Philistines with the last scandal from the Court Theatre.

An open door led into a smaller room. I peeped in, and saw an old woman seated close to the door; just opposite to her, in the big room, an old-fashioned mirror was hanging. As I wished to be undisturbed while I looked at her reflection in the mirror, I quickly retired, and once more seriously terrified the newspaper reader by sitting down next to him. By way of pretence I took up the paper he had laid aside; but even against this he protested with a discontented murmur. The waiter placed a glass of beer in front of me.

I could not, however, imagine that the old woman in the inner room could be my future mother-in-law. Minna had said that there was some resemblance between them, and it was impossible for me to find any trace of such a thing. The forehead was not at all high, but strongly arched, the eyes were not deeply set, and the lips were thick and shapeless, as was the rest of her greyish face. It looked like a thing which had been so long in water that it had become soaked and puffy, and such a condition might to be sure have effaced any resemblance which had ever existed.

I called the waiter, so that I could pay him, and asked if he knew a widow of the name of Jagemann who was often supposed to come there. "She sits in the small room," he answered, and I got up immediately and went to her. She moved uneasily on her sofa-corner, and, as I stepped up to her with a greeting, she looked so terrified that one would at least have thought that she was alone with me in a railway compartment.

I told her who I was, and supposed that she through a letter