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mean?’
    ‘Oh Effi, we didn’t mean any offence, not to you and not to the Baron. Did you say Innstetten? And Geert? Nobody around here is called anything like that. These old aristocratic names can be so funny.’
    ‘Yes indeed, my dear. But that’s the aristocracy. They don’t have to care, and the further back they go the less they have to care. You mustn’t mind if I say you don’t understand these things. We’ll still be friends. So it’s Geert von Innstetten, and a baron. He’s exactly the same age as Mamma, to the day.’
    ‘And how old is your Mamma then?’
    ‘Thirty-eight.’
    ‘A nice age to be.’
    ‘Yes, it is, especially if you still have Mamma’s looks. She’s a beautiful woman, really, don’t you think? And the way she has everything just so, and is always so poised and refined, never puts her foot in it like Papa. If I were a young lieutenant, I would fall in love with Mamma.’
    ‘But Effi, how can you say such a thing?’ said Hulda, ‘That’s against the fourth commandment.’
    ‘Nonsense. How can that be against the fourth commandment? I think Mamma would be pleased if she knew I’d said something like that.’
    ‘That may well be,’ Hertha interjected, ‘but let’s get on with the story.’
    ‘All right, be patient, I’m just going to start… So, Baron Innstetten. He wasn’t quite twenty and he was stationed in Rathenow and was a regular guest on all the estates here, though his favourite was grandfather Belling’s place in Schwantikow. It wasn’t of course because of Grandfather that he called so often, and when Mamma talks about it, anybody can see who the real attraction was. And I think it was mutual.’
    ‘So what happened then?’
    ‘What happened was what was bound to happen, what always happens. He was still far too young, and when Papa came on the scene he was already a Ritterschaftsrat and had Hohen-Cremmen, so there wasn’t really much to think about and she accepted him and became Frau von Briest… And the rest, what came after that, you know… The rest is me.’
    ‘Yes, the rest is you, Effi,’ said Bertha. ‘Thank goodness for that, we wouldn’t have had you if things had been otherwise. So you must tell us, what did Innstetten do, what became of him? He didn’t take his own life, otherwise you wouldn’t be expecting him today.’
    ‘No, he didn’t take his own life. But it was a bit like it.’
    ‘Did he try?’
    ‘No, he didn’t. But he wasn’t inclined to stay in the neighbourhood any longer, and it must have put him off army life in general. It was peacetime after all. To cut a long story short he resigned his commission and went off to study law, “really made a meal of it” as Papa puts it; but when the war of 1870 came along he joined up again, with the Perlebergers, mark you, not with his old regiment, and he got the Iron Cross. As you would expect, because he’s very dashing. And immediately after the war he went back to his files, and they say Bismarck thinks highly of him, and the Kaiser too, and that’s how he came to be a Landrat, for the district of Kessin.’
    ‘Kessin? I don’t know any Kessin near here.’
    ‘No, it isn’t in our part of the country, it’s a fair way from here, in Pomerania, Eastern Pomerania in fact, not that that means anything, because it’s a coastal resort (everywhere’s a coastal resort up there) and this holiday trip Baron Innstetten is making is a kind of tour of his cousins or something. He wants to see old acquaintances and relatives.’
    ‘He’s got relatives here?’
    ‘Yes and no, depends how you look at it. There are no Innstettens here, in fact there are no Instettens left at all, I don’t think. But he has some distant cousins on his mother’s side here, and mainly I think he wanted to see Schwantikow and the Bellings’ house again, which hold so many memories for him. He was over there yesterday, and today he’s coming to Hohen-Cremmen.’
    ‘And what does your father say