It was long after eleven, but nothing had been seen of Gieshuebler as yet.  “I can’t wait any longer,” Geert had said, whose duties called him away.  “If Gieshuebler comes while I am gone, receive him as kindly as possible and the call will go especially well.  He must not become embarrassed.  When he is ill at ease he cannot find a word to say, or says the queerest kind of things.  But if you can win his confidence and put him in a good humor he will talk like a book.  Well, you will do that easily enough.  Don’t expect me before three; there is a great deal to do over across the way.  And the matter of the room upstairs we will consider further.  Doubtless, the best thing will be to leave it as it is.”

With that Innstetten went away and left his young wife alone.  She sat, leaning back, in a quiet, snug corner by the window, and, as she looked out, rested her left arm on a small side leaf drawn out of the cylindrical desk.  The street was the chief thoroughfare leading to the beach, for which reason there was a great deal of traffic here in the summer time, but now, in the middle of November, it was all empty and quiet, and only a few poor children, whose parents lived in thatched cottages clear at the further edge of the “Plantation” came clattering by in their wooden shoes.  But Effi felt none of this loneliness, for her fancy was still engaged with the strange things she had seen a short time before during her examination of the house.

This examination began with the kitchen, which had a range of modern make, while an electric wire ran along the ceiling and into the maids’ room.  These two improvements had only recently been made, and Effi was pleased when Innstetten told her about them.  Next they went from the kitchen back into the hall and from there out into the court, the first half of which was little more than a narrow passage-way running along between the two side wings of the house.  In these wings were to be found all the other rooms set apart for house-keeping purposes.  In the right the maids’ room, the manservant’s room, and the mangling room; to the left the coachman’s quarters, situated between the stable and the carriage shed and occupied by the Kruse family.  Over this room was the chicken house, while a trap door in the roof of the stable furnished ingress and egress for the pigeons.  Effi had inspected all these parts of the house with a great deal of interest, but this interest was exceeded by far when, upon returning from the court to the front of the house, she followed Innstetten’s leading and climbed the stairway to the upper story.  The stairs were askew, ramshackly, and dark; but the hall, to which they led, almost gave one a cheerful sensation, because it had a great deal of light and a good view of the surrounding landscape.  In one direction it looked out over the roofs of the outskirts of the city and the “Plantation,” toward a Dutch windmill standing high up on a dune; in the other it looked out upon the Kessine, which