It was May. The trees had shaken off their snowy blossoms, and the huge
beds of hyacinths and crocuses, which had been so admired on the lawn
before the villa, had quite done blooming. The lilacs and syringas were
in flower, the tender green buds were just peeping forth upon the
rose-bushes, and the shade in the shrubbery and in the linden avenue was
growing deeper and darker. The river ran once more clear through the
garland of green that bordered it on either side, and over the dear old
house upon its bank there clambered a web of greenery that, day by day,
concealed more and more of the white walls. The healthy grape-vines
drooped their tendrils even above the overhanging eaves.
The guest-chamber stood untenanted once more. Henriette had been
removed some time since to the villa, apparently quite recovered;
indeed, her disease seemed to be checked: its progress was not
perceptible; and this beneficial change the dean's widow ascribed to
Kitty's nursing. The two sisters in their third story led a pleasant,
isolated existence that was full of fresh charm since the new piano had
been placed in Kitty's room. Not to Kitty's care alone was Henriette's
improvement due: her intimate intercourse with the doctor's aunt had
proved of great advantage to her. Her views of life and of its duties
and pleasures had undergone a change in the quiet of the house by the
river. She no longer recoiled from the thought of a retired life,--the
whirl of fashion and society aroused in her now no eager longings.
And, in truth, the councillor's home had never been so gay in a worldly
sense as at present, since the elevation of its master to the
aristocracy. There were many occasions, and very welcome ones, for
festivities of various kinds, and the Frau President's invention and the
councillor's purse seemed alike inexhaustible. The man's good fortune
was wondrous indeed. Disturbed by no loss, no failure, whatever was
touched by the enchanted wand of his business genius seemed to turn to
gold,--his wealth was estimated by millions. And he thoroughly
understood how to wear the glory of his new distinction, how to make it
interesting, an inexhaustible theme of wonder and admiration for rich
and poor. The road past Villa Baumgarten became a fashionable
promenade; strangers were shown the magnificent estate which was always
being added to and improved. They told of costly pictures and statuary,
of rare collections gathered together within those marble walls of a
plate-room not to be equalled in the royal palace. The crowd halted and
gaped when one of his equipages waited before the gates, and wondered
whether the light cloud of sand, stirred by the wind upon the
gravel-walks, were not gold-dust.
Large additions were building, making long stretches of road through the
park almost impassable, heaped up as they were with blocks of granite
and marble to be used in these additions and in the new stables, the old
ones, although spacious and convenient, having long been too small for
the councillor's passion for fine horses. The ground selected for the
artificial lake proved rather unsuitable for such an adornment, and
this, with the new tropical conservatory, absorbed enormous sums of
money. And one day a multitude of workmen arrived to undertake the
repair of an extensive and very elegant pavilion, which had been
hitherto locked up and in disuse. It was situated in the forest, at a
considerable distance from the villa, but from its upper windows there
was a good view of the road and the town. A graceful wing was added to
the original building, the windows were all provided with plate-glass,
and from time to time the councillor would produce from his pocket
patterns of stuffs for covering furniture, or drawings for parquet
floorings, and beg the aid of the Frau President's taste in their
selection. On such occasions she was wont to be very curt and
ungracious, while Flora smiled behind her pocket-handkerchief; but the
old lady was forced to choose, in spite of her declaration that she was
not at all interested in the renovation of the old "barracks," and had
quite enough of work to last her lifetime in the arrangement and
ordering of the villa, without troubling herself about a lodging-house
for business friends of the councillor's, a place where she certainly
never should set her foot. Therefore she steadily ignored the new
building, in spite of the incessant noise and hammering that resounded
thence, much as the ambitious spouse of a reigning sovereign ignores her
future dower-house.
In all this bustle, this hurry of beginnings and endings, the councillor
came and went like a bird of passage. He made many business excursions,
but these were shortly all to have an end, he said, and then he should
purchase a large estate in the country and become really one of the
landed aristocracy. Whenever he had two or three holidays, he spent
much time in the third story; he drank coffee there regularly in the
afternoon, to the great vexation of the Frau President, who thereby lost
her favourite hour in her conservatory; for she was naturally far too
attentive to leave "dear Moritz" to the society of a peevish invalid and
an unformed school-girl, and almost always made her appearance with him.
This was a great relief to Kitty, who had conceived an unconquerable,
shy dislike of her guardian since he had grown so strangely affable and
even tender in his demeanour towards herself, and so false, so deceitful
in his external politeness towards the Frau President. Involuntarily
she adopted, in her intercourse with him, the dignified reserve of a
woman, where she had formerly shown the confidence of a child. And this
very change seemed to please and encourage him in his new, strange role.
He divined her wishes and fulfilled them; he had long since consented
that the unused portion of the mill-garden should be sold to the
workmen. He placed no obstacles in the way of any of her benevolent
schemes, and, when her purse was empty, filled it without a word of
remonstrance. "Deny yourself the fulfilment of no whim, Kitty; I shall
soon have to buy you another iron safe," he said, in allusion to the
astounding increase of her capital. She listened in gloomy silence.
With all his finesse and diplomatic replies to her grave inquiries, he
had never yet disproved the complaint made by the people, that her
wealth had been gained by pitiless usury,--a complaint to which the Frau
President never lost an opportunity of alluding. The naive childish
delight Kitty had formerly taken in being so rich had been converted
into a kind of dread of the money which was so swiftly, so strangely
accumulating, only, it might be, to fall upon and crush her at some
future day in just retribution.
She had grown notably graver. The sunny smile that her lively
temperament had so often called up upon her face was now rare. She was
never unreservedly gay, except in the house by the river, and there only
at certain times. The dean's widow had been for some time charitably
teaching a number of poor children to knit and to sew, every Wednesday
and Saturday afternoon. In this little scheme Kitty, with the joyful
consent of the old lady, had taken part. Intercourse with children was
something entirely novel in her experience, stirring chords in her
nature the existence of which she had never suspected. She took
heartfelt delight in the little creatures, and admitted to herself that
the care and instruction of them was an occupation beyond all others to
her in interest.
She clothed them when they needed it,--there was always an apron or
little dress in her work-basket,--and she provided (which the dean's
widow could not have afforded) fruit and biscuit for their refreshment
when the hour of industry was over. In the summer the lessons were
given in the garden, and when they were over the children, for the most
part living in the closest and darkest alleys of the town could enjoy a
romp on the grass in the shade of the fruit-trees. Kitty had provided
portable benches for seats, and balls and hoops for the hour of
recreation that followed work.
Flora was greatly vexed at all this, which she chose to regard as an
infringement of her rights with regard to the doctor's aunt, but she was
wise enough to suppress all evidence of her annoyance in the house by
the river, since "the old woman took it so very ill if the tall girl
with vulgar red cheeks and genuine Sommer features was not regarded as a
perfect pattern-card of every imaginable virtue." The beautiful
betrothed visited the house daily; she had had a dozen embroidered white
aprons made, trimmed with lace, and never appeared without this domestic
adornment, which became her admirably. No one could accuse her of not
making every exertion to gain the approval of the doctor's aunt. She
exposed her delicate face to the heat of the kitchen fire that she might
learn how to bake cake; she took lessons in pickling and preserving, and
once even took the flat-iron from the maid-servant's hand and herself
ironed a table-napkin; but, in spite of these tremendous exertions, she
never succeeded in inducing the dean's widow to depart in the smallest
degree from the courteous but excessively reserved demeanour that she
had adopted towards her nephew's betrothed ever since that most unlucky
evening. She seemed to know perfectly well how, after these efforts,
Flora would withdraw to her dressing-room as if fatigued to death, there
to pull off her apron and toss it into a corner, and then usually to
refresh herself by a round of visits in the carriage to her friends,
whose ill-concealed envy was an inexhaustible source of satisfaction for
her. These friends maintained unanimously that the university
professor's future wife gave herself the airs of a full-plumaged peacock
as she rolled along in her coupe, and that her arrogance was almost
unbearable.
The sudden change in Doctor Bruck's career was still a nine-days'
wonder. Many could hardly yet believe that the calumniated and
depreciated young physician of a few weeks since now walked the streets
of the capital an actual Hofrath. The man grew daily in the estimation
of court and public; and, since his removal to L---- would in future
make him unattainable, every sufferer was desirous of benefiting by his
skill. Thus it happened that Doctor Bruck was actually overwhelmed with
patients. His manuscript lay untouched upon his writing-table; he slept
in his lodgings in town, taking his meals there usually, and thus
declining to avail himself of the councillor's daily invitations to
dine; any time spent at the villa or with his aunt had to be stolen, as
he expressed it, from his patients.
Kitty saw him but seldom, and was all the more struck with the great
change in him, probably in consequence of hard work, she thought. He
looked pale and wearied; his former quiet but gentle reserve had become
gloomy taciturnity. With Kitty he had scarcely interchanged two words
since she had surprised his tete-a-tete with Flora in the hall, and his
curt manner towards her had been such as to convince her that her
inopportune appearance on that occasion had greatly angered him. It
wounded her that it should be so, and she avoided him whenever she
could.
In his conduct towards Flora, on the other hand, there was not the
slightest change; he was the same grave, dignified person whom Kitty had
seen the first time she had seen the betrothed pair together. Sometimes
she half believed that the terrible scene by Henriette's bedside was
either a freak of her own imagination, or else that Doctor Bruck
possessed a power, common to no other mortal, of forgetting, of
absolutely obliterating from his memory, disagreeable occurrences.
Flora had evidently expected that her entreaty for forgiveness, her
manifest repentance, would restore the intimate intercourse of the first
weeks of their betrothal. Loving her so passionately as he did, must he
not be intensely happy in knowing her now irrevocably his own again?
Perhaps the happiness was there, only concealed for the present, and his
beautiful betrothed might console herself by reflecting that a man of
Bruck's stamp was not too easily appeased, that all would be as she
would have it by September, the month now fixed for the marriage.
In the meanwhile, the twentieth of May, Flora's birthday, had come.
Every table in her room was covered with flowers, the usual gifts of her
friends. Even the princess had sent a magnificent bouquet to the
betrothed of the Hofrath, whom she delighted to honour, and the most
flattering congratulations poured in from various grandees of the court.
Yes, it was a day of triumph for Flora; a day to strengthen her in the
conviction that she was a favourite of the gods, one destined to an
exceptionally brilliant career.
And yet there was a cloud upon her brow, and now and then she frowned
darkly upon the table in the centre of the room. Among the gifts from
her grandmother and her sisters stood a handsome mantel-clock of black
marble. Doctor Bruck had sent it to her early in the morning, with an
accompanying congratulatory note, excusing his non-appearance before the
afternoon, on the ground of anxiety concerning a patient who was very
ill.
"I cannot understand why Leo could find nothing prettier for me than
that clumsy thing," she said, as she pointed to the clock, to the Frau
President, who had taken the princess's bouquet from a vase and was
smelling it eagerly, as if it must exhale a peculiar perfume. "No one
likes to give a _black_ birthday present; for my part, I consider it at
least very bad taste."
"The clock is very suitable, chosen quite in accordance with your taste,
Flora; it is intended to complete the decoration of this room," said
Henriette. She was lying on the crimson couch, and, as she spoke, she
glanced contemptuously at the black marble pedestals in the corners of
the room.
"Nonsense! you know as well as I that I cannot take this furniture away
with me. Moritz furnished this room entirely according to my desire, it
is true, but so far as I know he has given me neither the furniture nor
the hangings. And I would not take them away with me if he offered them
to me,--one grows just as tired of a stereotyped style of furnishing as
of a dress that has been often worn. What in the world shall I do with
that black thing in L----, in my new boudoir that is furnished in lilac
with bronze ornaments?"
"I, too, should have preferred a fresh bouquet; but you are not
sentimental, Flora," Henriette remarked, not without a shade of malice.
Kitty, dressed in white to-day for the first time, was standing beside a
beautiful myrtle-bush which the dean's widow had reared herself and sent
as her gift. The girl, with a sorrowful smile, passed her hand as if in
a caress over its shining tender leaves. No one appreciated this
beautiful present, which it must have cost the giver a pang to resign.
In the afternoon, also, the reception-rooms were open, for visitors were
still coming with congratulations. The entire suite of these lower
rooms, when opened, presented a charming coup-d'oeil. The warm air blew
in through the gilt bronze tracery of the balcony, bearing on its wings
the odour of the lindens in the avenue and of the opening flowers on the
lawn; the golden May sunshine streamed through the high windows. In the
crimson room alone it was powerless to awaken a single bright
reflection. There all looked dark and cold as ever,--it seemed cruel to
imprison all the lovely flowers upon the tables within those four dark
walls.
Henriette reclined in a rocking-chair opposite the open door of the
balcony. She would have liked to look as like the May as Kitty, and her
emaciated figure was enveloped in clouds of white muslin; but she was
cold, and had wrapped about her shoulders a soft white shawl of
embroidered crape, over which her abundant hair fell in rich waves; it
had never been coiled up since her last attack.
Thus lying motionless in the flickering sunlight, with her large
dark-blue eyes wide open, shaded by their long dark lashes, and her
snowy skin only near the temples tinged with faint carmine, she looked
like a waxen doll. She had sent Kitty to the piano in the music-room,
and was awaiting, with hands folded in her lap, the beginning of
Schubert's "Lob der Thraenen." Suddenly the faint flush near her
temples deepened to rose, and her clasped hands involuntarily sought her
heart--Doctor Bruck entered the drawing-room.
Flora flew towards him and hung upon his arm. She scarce gave him time
to speak to the others, but drew him into her room to look at her
birthday gifts. The beautiful woman who had endeavoured for so long to
impress all with her learning and studious habits of research, to-day,
on her twenty-ninth birthday, manifested the naive grace of a girl of
sixteen, and was indeed, with her lovely animated face and supple lithe
movements, charmingly youthful.
Kitty stood by the music-stand, looking for the notes of the song, as
the pair passed her on the way to Flora's room. She looked around for an
instant, to receive Bruck's half-embarrassed bow, and then went on
diligently with her search.
"Look, Leo, to-day I close with the past, wherein I erred so sadly and
almost destroyed the happiness of my life," Flora said, in her
irresistibly sweet voice, as Kitty took from the shelf a thick portfolio
of music. "I would not recall the memory of that wretched evening, when
I lost all self-control and, in my excitement and agitation, uttered
words in which my heart and soul had no share; but, for the truth's
sake, and because I owe it to myself, I must tell you that you too were
wrong then in your adverse criticism of me. It was no desire for
notoriety that drove me to authorship, but true talent,--to speak
plainly, genius. Ask me no further! I can assure you I could have made
my way by my work, 'Woman,' which you have never seen. According to the
verdict of competent judges, it is indeed calculated to win me name and
fame in the world; but how could I desire, by your side, to follow any
path of my own, or to exercise any of my special gifts? No, Leo, I will
bask solely in the light of your fame, as is fitting for a woman, and,
in order that temptation may never in the future again assail me, these
pages, the result of diligent study and of the fount of poesy in my
soul, must vanish from the world."
Kitty, who had just found the notes she had been seeking, turned at this
moment to take her place at the piano. She saw Flora hold a lighted
match to her manuscript, and throw it, blazing, into the fire-place.
The beautiful woman turned her head towards the window where the doctor
was standing; perhaps she wished that he should make an attempt to
hinder her from what she was doing; but no step was audible, no hand was
extended to snatch the precious fuel from the flames. The smoke of the
burning paper, borne on the wind of spring, floated into the music-room;
and as Flora, biting her under lip, and with a strange gleam in her
eyes, stepped back from the fire-place, Kitty took her seat at the piano
and began Liszt's arrangement of the "Lob der Thraenen."
Kitty would not listen to Bruck's reply; it was terrible to her to be
perpetually an involuntary witness of these scenes between the betrothed
pair; it would end in Bruck's hating her. But she was indignant at the
farce she had again seen played. The battered manuscript, repeatedly
pronounced to be worthless by competent critics, had been dragged out
once more, to play the part of a tragic sacrifice made by a high-minded
woman, who thus in submission to a stern lord and master renounced the
genius which she was aware she possessed.
Through the melody that Kitty's fingers evoked from the piano the girl
could hear a continuous murmur of sound, in which she distinguished the
grave tone of the doctor's voice, although, to her great satisfaction,
no distinct word was audible. As she concluded, Flora entered the room
to pass through to the balconied apartment. She no longer hung upon
Bruck's arm, but walked beside him with the princess's bouquet in her
hand, looking like a child who has been reproved and dares not reply.
Flora had found her master. She darted an angry glance towards her
sister, whose hands were just lifted from the keys of the piano at the
close of the piece. "Thank heaven, you have done, Kitty!" she said,
standing still. "You bang away so that I can scarcely hear my own
voice. You see, you play your own little things very fairly,--they are
nursery airs, without any depth; but really you ought not to attempt
Schubert or Liszt; you have neither sufficient taste nor execution."
"Henriette asked for that piece," Kitty calmly replied, as she closed
the instrument. "I do not pretend to be a skilled musician----"
"No, my darling, indeed you do not; you do not care to make people stare
at your wonderful dexterity," suddenly interrupted Henriette, appearing
upon the threshold of the door as she spoke; "but never was there girl
who could interpret Schubert as you can. Or does Flora think that the
tears you bring to our eyes start entirely out of conventional
politeness?"
"They come from morbid nerves, nothing more!" replied Flora, laughing,
as she followed the doctor into the drawing-room, whither the Frau
President had called him.
The old lady was looking somewhat perplexed, as she sat with her
eye-glass in one hand, and in the other a letter, which the servant had
just brought her. "Ah, my dearest Hofrath,"--she used this title as
often as she possibly could, for the sound of it flattered her ear,--"my
friend Baroness Steiner writes me that she is coming here in a few days
to consult you. She is very anxious about her little grandson, the hope
of the ancient family Von Brandau. The boy has limped a little for some
time, and our most skilful physicians have searched in vain for the
cause of the trouble. Will you examine the child, and take him in
charge?"
"Certainly; provided the lady does not make too great a demand upon my
time." He well knew how fond the high-born dame in question was of
being waited for, and that she chose to have a cold in any one of her
family respected as if it were a mortal illness.
The Frau President was evidently offended at the indifference with which
her request was treated; she made no reply.
"The Baroness seems piqued by my recent postponement of her visit," she
said, addressing Flora; "this letter," tapping it with her eye-glass,
"is full of satire; if she had not been worried and anxious, she never
would have written to me. I can hardly tell you how it pains me. Now
she wishes to take rooms in the best hotel that can be found, where our
Hofrath can visit her, and begs me _at least_ to do her the favour to
secure a suite of five apartments for her." And as she spoke she cast
an annihilating glance from beneath her drooping eyelids towards the
lovely girl in the white dress, who, standing opposite her, behind a
large arm-chair, rested her arms upon the back of it, and grew
alternately red and pale as she listened to what was, every word of it,
intended as a reproach for her.
"She might be very comfortable on the third floor, if she did not really
need five rooms," the Frau President continued. "But she must have a
drawing-room for herself and her daughter Marie, a school-room for
little Job von Brandau and his governess, and three sleeping-rooms at
the very least. Of course she brings her maid." Much out of humour, she
leaned her head on her hand, in anxious reverie.
"All of which means that, during the visit of this pretentious Baroness,
Kitty will be in the way," Henriette angrily exclaimed.
"I have offered to go to the mill," Kitty said, without a trace of
irritation, as she passed her hand soothingly over Henriette's hair.
"Oh, no; I have thought of a far better plan, Kitty, if you must go,"
the invalid cried, with sparkling eyes. "We will beg the dean's widow
to give you her lovely spare room; I know she will be delighted, for she
fairly dotes upon you. Your piano can be taken over there, and I can go
to you whenever I choose----" She stopped as her eyes met those of the
doctor. He had turned away at first towards the window, but he looked
around now with undeniable disapproval on his face,--he scarcely seemed
like himself.
"I propose what seems to me far more fitting and practicable, that the
boy and his governess shall be lodged in my house," he said, coldly.
The Frau President loosened the cloud of lace beneath her chin, and
could not suppress a fleeting, ironical smile. "That can scarcely be
arranged, my dear Hofrath," she replied. "Nothing could induce my old
friend to be separated from Job, and then--you have no idea what a
spoiled child he is. Our own little prince is not so delicately brought
up as this last and only scion of the Brandaus; the poor, puny little
creature is bedded in satin and down. Yes, those people think such
luxuries only en regle. But we are put to it to make them comfortable."
"And why, Leo, should you prefer to give your aunt the trouble of having
that little monster--the petted scion of the Von Brandaus is positively
the naughtiest and most good-for-nothing little wretch in the world--in
her house?" Henriette indignantly asked; her nerves were in just the
irritated state that prompted her to say what she might hereafter
regret. "What has Kitty done to you? It has pained me for some time to
see how unjust you are to her. Do you despise her because her
grandfather was the castle miller? You hardly ever speak to her; and it
is ridiculous, for at all events she is Flora's sister. She is the only
one of us who never addresses you by your Christian name."
"My dear," Flora interrupted her, "I have long objected to that familiar
address, and if my wishes were consulted, no one would use it. To tell
the truth, I grudge an iota of my right to any one else. With regard to
yourself, Henriette, I let it pass; but I really entreat that Kitty may
not allow herself such a liberty." And she put her hand within the
doctor's arm and looked tenderly up in his face.
Embarrassed, perhaps, by this public display of affection, or irritated
by Henriette's reproof, the doctor started as if the white hand had been
an odious reptile, and his colour changed.
Kitty turned to leave the room. She could have burst into tears of
wounded feeling, but she bravely endured her pain and maintained a calm
demeanour. Just as she reached the door, it opened, and the councillor
entered. She forgot for the moment the dislike she had felt for him of
late, remembering only that he was her guardian and stood in a father's
place with regard to her, and as a result of this she lightly laid her
hand on his arm in greeting.
He looked surprised, but with a satisfied smile and an arch twinkle in
his eyes he pressed the little hand to his heart. His own hands were not
free: they held a small chest, which he placed upon the table by which
the Frau President was sitting. His entrance interrupted a most painful
scene, and Henriette, who had been the cause of it, could have fallen
upon his neck in gratitude to him for the easy, happy tone which he
adopted in his unconsciousness.
"Now I am content; my birthday gift for you, Flora, has come at last,"
he said. "My Berlin agent accuses the manufacturers of the delay in its
arrival." He lifted the cover. "Apropos, I have another birthday
pleasure for you," he added, with a gay, jesting air. "I have just
heard that you are avenged,--the leader of the attack upon you in the
forest, she of the menacing nails, has been sentenced to-day to a
considerable term of imprisonment; the others, who were either very
young or misled by her, have escaped with a reprimand."
"I cannot think that your news will really give Flora any pleasure,"
cried Henriette; "of course such offences must not go unpunished, and it
can do that fierce Megaera no harm to be shut up alone for a while; but
there was something so terrible for us all in that whole adventure, it
is so dreadful to be so hated, that I wish you had said nothing about
it, Moritz."
"Do you think so?" Flora asked, with a laugh. "Moritz knows me better;
he knows I am quite above being moved by it, and would not stir a finger
for the sake of popularity. And you were the same a while ago,
Henriette. I should like to know what you would have said eight months
ago if any one in our circle had advocated the rights of the people; all
that was entirely beneath your notice. But since Kitty has been here,
such questions and discussions are the order of the day on the third
floor, to such a degree that one stands abashed in presence of such
Spartan virtue and feminine heroism. I should not wonder if Kitty had
already been searching her cook-book for recipes for nourishing soups to
keep the culprit strong in her confinement."
"No, not that," Kitty bravely replied, looking full into the beautiful
and impertinent face turned towards her; "but I have made inquiries
about her family. She has four little children, and her unmarried
brother, who was one of Moritz's workmen and helped to provide for the
fatherless little ones, has been lying ill for a long time. Of course
these five helpless creatures must not suffer; and I have undertaken to
provide for them as long as they are thus destitute."
The councillor turned round, and a remonstrance seemed hovering upon his
lips. "Yes, Moritz," the young girl said, hastily, "at such moments I
have less horror of my grandfather's hoards."
The Frau President pushed back her chair impatiently. This "maudlin
sentimentality" was beyond a jest. "These are most extraordinary
statements and strangely perverted views of life and the world! Wealth
could not possibly fall into more dangerous hands," she cried. "Yes, my
dear Hofrath, I see you look in wonder at the hand now laid so
beseechingly on Moritz's arm because he would fain restrain it from such
wilful expenditure."
Kitty instantly withdrew her hand. She saw the doctor gloomily avert
his gaze, but he made no reply to the Frau President's remark.
"Ah, grandmamma, that was surely no glance of disapproval," Flora cried,
as she watched suspiciously the changing colour on the doctor's cheek.
"Bruck always was a kind of enthusiast for the lower classes----"
"He surely is so no longer, my child,--now that he frequents the court
and enjoys the prince's most distinguished regard."
"And why should such intercourse undermine my principles?" the doctor
asked, with apparent composure, although his voice sounded uncertain, as
if he were undergoing a mental struggle.
"Good heavens! you would not ally yourself with the revolutionary
party--with those social democrats?" the Frau President cried, in
dismay.
"I think I have already explained several times that, for very
humanity's sake, I belong to none of these extreme parties. I endeavour
to preserve that clear judgment which party hate is sure to cloud, and
which is most desirable if one wishes to labour for the true weal of his
fellow-mortals."
Meanwhile, the councillor had been busy unpacking the chest. He
especially disliked to have any topic touched upon the discussion of
which might endanger the peace of his household. He now unfolded a piece
of rich maize-coloured satin and another of violet velvet. "A couple of
toilettes for your first debut as the wife of a distinguished
professor," he said to Flora.
His end was gained. The splendour of the stuffs was too attractive for
female eyes; even Henriette forgot her irritation at sight of a couple
of exquisite fans, and some boxes of artificial flowers from Paris. But
the contents of the chest were not yet exhausted. "The other ladies of
my household must not go empty-handed, especially since I am to be at
home now for some time and shall have no other opportunity of bringing
them gifts," the councillor continued.
The Frau President, with a gracious smile, accepted a costly lace shawl,
and Henriette a white silk dress, while into Kitty's reluctant hand the
councillor, with a peculiarly significant glance, put a tolerably large
morocco case.
This glance aroused in an instant in the girl's soul a perfect tempest
of emotion, calling into life all the aversion that had of late stirred
within her towards her guardian and brother-in-law. No, no, a thousand
times no,--he should not gaze at her thus, as if together they shared a
secret which none else might know; once for all, she would put a stop to
this. Shame, annoyance, and an almost irresistible desire openly to
proclaim her aversion now before every one, filled her soul and were
mirrored on her face, although its changing expression was
misunderstood.
"Well, Kitty, is it such a novelty for you to receive a present?" asked
Flora. "What has Moritz given you? We must be told the sweet secret
some time. Let me see it, child." She took the case as it was nearly
dropping upon the floor, and pressed the spring that opened the lid. A
crimson light flashed from the stones forming the necklace that lay
inside upon black velvet.
The Frau President put up her eye-glass. "Superbly set; almost too
artistically antique for imitation, although modern fashion certainly
sanctions its being worn. This paste is uncommonly clear and
sparkling." She negligently extended her hand for the case, that she
might more conveniently examine its contents.
"Paste?" the councillor repeated, much piqued. "How, grandmamma, can
you accuse me of such want of taste? Is there a thread here that is not
genuine?" He passed his hand over the pile of glistening silks. "You
ought to know that I never purchase imitations."
The Frau President bit her lip. "I do know it, Moritz; but really in
this case I am astounded,--these are such rubies as even our beloved
princess does not possess."
"Then I am sorry that the prince cannot afford to give them to her," the
councillor rejoined, with a conceited smile. "I certainly should be
ashamed to present Kitty with a valueless gift,--Kitty, who in a couple
of years will be her own mistress and will be able to buy as many jewels
as she pleases. Any imitation would then be tossed contemptuously
aside."
"I agree with you there," the Frau President remarked, ironically.
"Kitty has a decided preference for the solid and expensive,--witness
the heavy silks which she always wears. But, my child," and she turned
to the young girl, who had folded her trembling hands again on the back
of the chair by which she stood, and made no motion to possess herself
of the jewels, "a knowledge of how to dress one's self must be the
result of taste, acquired by intercourse with people of refinement.
Such gorgeous stones are not befitting your eighteen years; a plain
cross or locket is more becoming so youthful a neck. The most you
should wear would be a simple coral or pearl necklace."
"But Kitty will not always be eighteen or always a girl, grandmamma,"
Flora exclaimed. "We know that well enough,--eh, Kitty?"
The young girl's eyes flashed indignantly at the air and tone of the
speaker. She turned proudly away to depart without a word.
"Only see how dignified the child can look!" Flora said, with a forced
laugh. She could not succeed in quite concealing her vexation. "She
behaves as if my harmless trifling had betrayed a state secret. Is it a
crime, then, to want to be married? Nonsense, you little prude! Never
deny in public what may be confessed in confidential moments." She ran
her fingers over the sparkling rubies with a mischievous and significant
glance at the councillor. "Yes, Moritz, this certainly is a necklace
fit only for--the wife of a millionaire."
The Frau President now arose, hastily gathered up her letters and her
eye-glass, and drew her scarf over her shoulders to leave the room. "I
hope you will never falter in your love of the genuine, my dear Moritz,"
she said, coldly. "The champagne in which we drank Flora's health to-day
was wanting in that quality: it has given me a headache. I must lie
down for a while."
At the door she turned once more. "When I have refreshed myself a
little, I must beg you to come to some conclusion," she said, holding
out a letter to the councillor. "Read that, and you will see that the
Baroness must not be put off and offended a second time. I yielded the
other day for the sake of peace, but indeed I cannot submit so entirely
again. People of position really cannot be pulled about like puppets
and shaken off at pleasure. Remember that, I beg you, Moritz."
She left the room with a stately inclination and an air of severe
dignity.