A faint smile flitted over the right side of the Consul's face. "Very well; we will call her Phœnix. And will you see the name painted on her stern?"
As Gabriel left the room he met Miss Cordsen. He threw his arms round her neck, and began hugging and kissing her, repeating all the time, incoherently, the words, "Phœnix—Dresden—the firm."
Miss Cordsen scolded and struggled. She was afraid to scream; but he was too strong for her, and the old lady had to resign herself to her fate. At length he ran off, and Miss Cordsen was left, arranging her cap-strings, and saying to herself, "They are all alike, one and all." But when Gabriel ran across the yard, and, meeting the fat kitchen-maid Bertha, gave her a friendly slap on the back, the old lady clapped her hands together, and exclaimed, "Well, I declare, he is the worst of the whole lot!"
The Consul had several long interviews with Morten, who put on an air of importance before the clerks and workpeople. But his feelings, when he took his father's place in the old armchair in the office, are not easily described.
Fanny saw little of her husband, and noticed him even less. Her connection with Delphin had obtained a power over her, which she could not previously have believed possible, and she strove by every means at her command to keep him fast. But since the day on which Delphin had discovered that Madeleine knew of his intimacy with Fanny, his position became almost unbearable. He would gladly have done with it, but had not the will, and he lacked the courage
