“Good night, Wolf,” he said quietly. “She’ll be all right now. Give my love to Gerda. By the way”⁠—and he lowered his voice so that Mattie shouldn’t hear him⁠—“Gerda says your mother wants to come; and for that reason she’d rather come independently of you, with her father. I told her it should be exactly as she wished.”

Wolf at that moment found it difficult to concentrate his mind upon this nice point.

“We’ll all be with you anyway, Darnley. As long as we’re all there, it doesn’t matter how we turn up, does it? Well, good luck to you!” But he had no sooner got his friend’s fingers in his own than he impulsively dropped them. Catching the man’s head between his hands, he kissed him rapidly several times on the forehead. “Good luck to you!” he repeated, as he strode off down the garden. “I kissed the mother; why not the son?” he thought, as he reached the gate; but something produced a constriction in his throat that was akin to a sob. “Down, wantons⁠ ⁠… down!” he murmured audibly, as he fumbled for the latch of the gate.