Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source: http://books.google.com/books?id=1hUtAAAAYAAJ

COUNTESS ERIKA'S

APPRENTICESHIP

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
OF

OSSIP SCHUBIN

AUTHOR OF "O THOU, MY AUSTRIA!" ETC.

BY

MRS. A. L. WISTER

PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1891

Copyright, 1891, by J. B. Lippincott Company

All rights reserved.

Printed By J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.

PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.

A friend returning from a stroll round the globe brought back an odd volume of my work picked up in San Francisco, translated without my leave, but proving by its very existence that the American reading world take a certain interest in my show and its puppets.

Though in a certain sense these unauthorized editions are a picking of the author's pocket, yet I must confess that I felt rather flattered.

Every one possessing any feeling for modernism must highly prize what American art and American literature have done and are doing for the directness, vividness, and intensity of presentation to our eyes or our imagination either of outward objects or the silent workings of character and inner sensations.

The rapidity and intensity of picturing frequently remind us of an electric shock.

We Old World folk take life, to a certain degree, more at our leisure, but nevertheless every real artist follows the great direction that has seized all our contemporary being.

Directness of truth, vividness and intensity of presentation, exact rendering of impression, are the means by which we seek to produce life; life itself is the object, but I am afraid that to the end the life-giving spark will defy analysis.

Let me hope that the figures whose woes and weal my reader will follow through these pages may be half as alive to him as they have been to me; and let me hope, likewise, that when he closes the volume we may have become fast friends.

I cannot let this opportunity pass without thanking Mrs. Wister most heartily for her faithful and picturesque rendering of my story.

What a rare delight it is to an author to find himself so admirably rendered and so perfectly understood only those can feel that have undergone the acute misery of seeing their every thought mangled, their every sentence massacred, as common translations will mangle and massacre word and thought.

Therefore let every writer thank Providence, if he find an artist like Mrs. Wister willing to put herself to the trouble of following his intentions, and of clothing his ideas in so brilliant a garb.

It is only natural, therefore, that, having been lucky enough to find so rare a translator, I should authorize the translation to the absolute exclusion of any other.

So, hoping it may find favour in the eyes of my transatlantic readers, I should like to shake hands with them at parting and say good-bye with the Old World saw, "Auf Wiedersehen."

Ossip Schubin.

COUNTESS ERIKA'S

APPRENTICESHIP.

CHAPTER I.

Baron von Strachinsky reclined upon a lounge in his smoking-room, recovering from the last pecuniary calamity which he had brought upon himself. The fact was, he had built a sugar-factory in a tract of country where the nearest approach to a sugar-beet that could be found was a carrot on a manure-heap, and his enterprise had been followed by the natural result.

He bore his misfortune with exemplary fortitude, and beguiled the time with a sentimental novel upon the cover of which was portrayed a lady wringing her hands in presence of a military man drinking champagne. At times he wept over this fiction, at others he dozed over it and was at peace.

This he called submitting with dignity to the mysterious decrees of destiny, and he looked upon himself as a martyr.

His wife was not at home. Whilst he reposed thus in melancholy self-admiration, she was devoting herself to the humiliating occupation of visiting in turn one and another of her wealthy relatives, begging of them the loan of funds necessary for the furtherance of her husband's brilliant scheme.

"It is very sad, but 'tis the fault of circumstances," sighed the Baron when his thoughts wandered from his book to his absent wife, and for a moment he would cover his eyes with his hand.

It was near the end of August, and the asters were beginning to bloom. Cheerful industry reigned throughout the village. The Baron indeed complained of the failure of the harvest, but this he did of every harvest the proceeds of which were insufficient to cover the interest of his numerous debts: the peasantry, who by no means exacted so high a rate of profit from their meadows and pasture-lands, were happy and content, and the stubble-fields were already dotted with hayricks.

Outside in the garden a little girl in a worn and faded frock was playing funeral: she was interring her canary, which she had found dead in its cage. She was very sad: the bird had been her best friend. No one paid her any attention. Her mother was away, and the Englishwoman whose duty it was to superintend her education was just now occupied in company with the bailiff, an ambitious young man desirous of improving his knowledge of languages, in studying the working of a new mowing-machine. From time to time the child glanced through the open door of the principal entrance to the castle into a rather bare hall, its floor paved with red tiles and its high vaulted walls whitewashed and adorned with stags' horns of all sizes. The Baron von Strachinsky had bought these last in one lot at an auction, but he had long cherished the conviction that they all came from his forest. He had a decided taste for fine, high-sounding expressions, always designating his wood as his 'forest,' his estate as his 'domain,' and his garden as his 'park.'

A charwoman with a flat, red, perspiring face, and a knot of thin bristling hair at the back of her head, from which her yellow cotton kerchief had slipped down upon her neck, was shuffling upon hands and knees, her high kilted skirts leaving her red legs quite bare, over the tiles of the hall, rubbing away at the dirt and footmarks with a wisp of straw, while the steam of hot soapy water rose from the wooden bucket beside her.

The little girl outside had just planted a row of pink asters upon the grave, which she had dug with a pewter spoon, and had filled up duly, when the scratching of the wisp of straw suddenly ceased.

A young fellow was standing in the hall,--very young, scarcely sixteen, and with a portfolio under his arm. His garb was that of a journeyman mechanic, but his bearing had in it something of distinction, and his face was delicately modelled, very pale, with large dark eyes, almost black, gleaming below the brown curls of his hair. The same class of countenance is frequently seen among the Neapolitan boys who sell Seville oranges in Rome; but such eyes as this lad had are seen at most only two or three times in a lifetime.

The child in the garden looked with evident satisfaction at the young fellow. Apparently he had come into the castle through the back entrance,--the one used by servants and beggars.

The charwoman wiped her red hands upon her apron and knocked at one of the doors opening into the hall. She was a new-comer, and did not know that the Baron von Strachinsky was never disturbed upon any ordinary pretext.

She knocked several times. At last a sleepy, ill-humoured voice said, "What is it?"

"Your Grace, a young gentleman: he wants to speak to your Grace."

With eyes but half open, and the pattern of the embroidered cushion upon which he had been sleeping stamped upon his cheek, the Baron von Strachinsky came out into the hall.

He was of middle height; his face had once been handsome, but was now red and bloated with excessive good living; he was slightly bald, and wore thick brown side-whiskers. His dress was a combination of slovenliness and foppery. He wore scarlet Turkish slippers, trodden down at heel, gray trousers, and a soiled dark-blue smoking-jacket with red facings and buttons.

"What do you want?" he roared, in a rage at being disturbed for so slight a cause.

The young fellow shrank from him, murmuring in a hoarse, tremulous voice, the voice of a very young man growing fast and but scantily nourished, "I am on my way home."

"What's that to me?" Strachinsky thundered, not without some excuse for his indignation.

The youth flushed scarlet. Shyly and awkwardly he held out his portfolio to the sleepy Baron. Evidently it contained drawings, which he would like to sell but had not the courage to show.

"Give him an alms!" Herr von Strachinsky shouted to the cook, who, hearing the noise, had hurried into the hall; then, turning to the scrubbing-woman, who was standing beside her steaming bucket, her toothless jaws wide open in dismay, he went on: "If you ever again dare for the sake of a wretched vagabond of a house-painter's apprentice to deprive me of the few moments of repose which I contrive to snatch from my wretched and tormented existence, I'll dismiss you on the spot!" With which he retired to his room, banging to the door behind him.

The cook offered the lad two kreutzers. His hand--a long, slender, boyish hand, almost transparent--shook, as he angrily threw the money upon the floor and departed.

The little girl in the garden had been watching the scene attentively. Her delicate frame trembled with indignation, as she rose, and, with arms hanging at her sides and small fists clinched in a somewhat dramatic attitude, fixed her eyes upon the door behind which the Baron had disappeared. She had very bright eyes for a child of nine years, and a very penetrating glance, a glance by no means friendly to the Baron. Thus she stood for a minute gazing at the door, then put her arms akimbo, frowned, and reflected. Before long she shrugged her shoulders with an air of precocious intelligence, deserted the newly-made grave, and hurried into the house, and to the pantry.

The door was open. She looked about her. By strict orders of the Baron, in his wife's absence all remains of provisions were hoarded in the pantry, although they were seldom of any use. As a consequence of this sordid housekeeping the child found a great store of dishes and bowls filled with scraps of meat and fish, stale cakes, and fermenting stewed apricots. It took her some time to discover what satisfied her,--a cold roast pheasant, and some pieces of tempting almond-cake left over from the last meal. These she packed in a basket with a flask of wine that had been opened, a tumbler, knife and fork, and a clean napkin. She decorated the basket with pink asters, and hurried out of the back door, intent upon playing the part of beneficent fairy.

Deep down in her heart there was a vein of romance which contrasted oddly with the keen good sense already gleaming in her bright childish eyes.

She ran until she was quite out of breath, searching vainly for her handsome vagabond. Should she inquire of some one if a young man with a portfolio under his arm had passed along the road? Her heart beat; she felt a little shy. From a distance the warm summer breeze wafted towards her the notes of a foreign air clearly whistled, and she directed her steps towards the spot whence it seemed to proceed.

There! yes, there----

Beside the road rippled a little brook on its way to the rushing stream beyond the village, a brook so narrow that a twelve-year-old school-boy could easily have jumped across it. Nevertheless the Baron von Strachinsky had thought best to span it with a magnificent three-arched stone bridge. In the shade thrown by this monumental structure, for the erection of which the Baron had vainly hoped to be decorated by his sovereign, the lad was crouching. He was even paler than before, and there were traces of tears on his cheeks, but all the same he whistled on with forced gaiety, as one does whistle when one has nothing to eat and hopes to forget his hunger.

The little girl felt like crying. He looked up and directly at her. Overcome by sudden shyness, she stood for a moment as if rooted to the spot; then, awkwardly offering her basket, she stammered, "Will you have it?" When he did not answer she simply set the basket down before him, and in her confusion would have avoided all explanations by running away.

But a warm young hand detained her firmly and kindly. "Did you come from there?" the lad asked, pointing to the castle. "Who sent you?"

His voice was agreeable, and his address that of a well-born youth.

"No one knows that I came," she answered, in confusion, and seeing that he frowned discontentedly at this, she added hastily, by way of excuse, "But if mamma had been at home she certainly would have sent me; she never lets a beggar leave the house without giving him something to eat."

At the word 'beggar' he turned away, whereupon she began to cry loudly, so loudly that he had to laugh. "But what are you crying for?" he asked; and she replied, in desperation, "I am crying because you will not eat anything."

"Indeed! is that all you are crying for?"

"Yes. Oh, do eat something,--do!" she sobbed.

"Well, since it is to gratify you so hugely," he replied, in a bantering tone; "but sit down beside me and help me." He looked full into her eyes with his careless, merry smile, then took her tiny hand in his and pressed his full, warm lips upon it twice.

She was greatly pleased by this courteous homage, and perhaps by the caress, for it was seldom that anything of the kind fell to her share. She had fully decided that the young fellow was no mechanic, but a prince in disguise, and in this exhilarating conviction she sat down upon the grass beside him and unpacked her basket. How he seemed to enjoy its contents, and how white his teeth were! There were also various indications of refinement and good breeding about his manner of eating, which would have given a more experienced observer than the little enthusiast beside him matter for reflection with regard to his rank in life. His portfolio lay beside him. She thrust a slender forefinger between its pasteboard covers tied together with green cotton strings, and whispered, gravely, "May I look into it?"

"If you would like to," he replied.

With great precision, as if the matter in hand were the unveiling of a sacred relic, she untied the strings and opened the portfolio. Her eyes opened wide, and an "Oh!" of enthusiastic admiration escaped her lips. A wiser critic than the little girl of nine would scarcely have accorded the sketches so much approval. They were undoubtedly stiff and unfinished. Nevertheless, no genuine lover of art would have passed them by without notice, for they indicated a high degree of talent. The hand was unskilled, but the lad had eyes to see.

The little girl gazed in rapt admiration. After a while she looked gravely up at her new friend, her compassion converted into awe. "Now I know what you are,--an artist!"

"Do you think so?" the lad rejoined, flattered by the reverential tone in which the word was uttered: meanwhile, he had finished the pheasant, and was considerably less pale than before.

"Can you paint everything you see?" she asked, after a short pause.

"I cannot paint anything," he answered, with a sort of merry discontent which, now that his hunger was satisfied, characterized his every look and movement. "I cannot paint anything," he repeated, with a little nod, "but I try to paint everything that I like."

They looked in each other's eyes, he suppressing a laugh, she in some distress. At last she blurted out, "Do you not like me at all, then?"

"Shall I paint you?"

She nodded.

"What will you give me for it?"

She put her hand in her pocket, and took out a very shabby porte-monnaie, a superannuated possession of Herr von Strachinsky's which he had given her in a moment of unwonted generosity, and in which were five bright silver guilders. "Is that enough?" she asked.

"I will not take money," he replied.

She had been guilty of another stupidity. She was bitterly conscious of it, and so, to justify herself, she put on an air of great wisdom. "You are a very queer artist," she admonished him, "not to take money for your pictures. No wonder you nearly starve."

He took the hand which held the five despised silver coins, and kissed it three times.

"I do take money for my pictures," he declared, "but not from you: I will draw your picture with all my heart."

"For nothing?"

"No: you must give me a kiss for it. Will you?" He watched her without seeming to look at her. Again the insinuating, roguish smile hovered upon his lips,--a charming smile, which he must have inherited from some kind, light-hearted woman.

She was not quite sure of the rectitude of her conduct, her heart throbbed almost as if she were on the verge of some compact with Satan, but finally, "If you will not do it without," she said, with a sigh, plucking at her hands,--very pretty hands, neglected though they were.

He nodded gaily. "All right."

Then he made her sit down on the grass opposite him, unpacked his tin colour-case, fastened a piece of rough gray paper upon the cover of his portfolio, and began.

She sat very still, very grave, her feet stretched out straight in front of her, supporting herself upon both hands. Around them breathed the soft August air, the glowing summer sunshine sparkled on the translucent waters of the little brook above which the stone bridge displayed its pompous proportions, while upon the banks grew hundreds of blue forget-me-nots, and yellow water-lilies bloomed among the trunks of the old willows, which here and there showed gaping wounds in their bark, from which meadow daisies were sprouting and, with the silvery willow leaves, showing softly gray against the green background of the gentle ascent of the pasture-land. The brook murmured dreamily, and from the distance came the rhythmic beat of the threshers' flails. Steam threshing-machines were not then in general use.

Both were mute,--he in the warmth of his youthful artistic enthusiasm, she with expectation.

Suddenly the shrill tinkle of a bell broke the quiet. "That is the dinner-bell!" the little girl exclaimed, springing up with an impatient shrug. She knew that there could be no more pleasure and liberty for her; she would be missed, looked for, and found.

"I must go home," she cried. "Have you finished it?"

"Very nearly, yes."

She ran and looked over his shoulder, breathless with astonishment at what she saw upon the gray paper,--a little girl in a very short, faded gown, and long red stockings, also much faded, a very slender figure, a little round face, a delicate little nose, two grave bright eyes that looked out into the world with a startled expression, a short upper lip, a round chin, a very fair skin, and shining reddish-brown hair which waved long and silky about the narrow childish shoulders and was tied at the back of the head with a blue ribbon.

He had unfastened the sketch from the portfolio, and she held it in her hands, examining it narrowly. "Is it like?" she asked, and then, looking down at herself, she added, "The gown is like, and the stockings are like, but the face,--is that like?" She looked up at him eagerly.

"I cannot do it any better," he replied, rather ambiguously.

"Oh, you must not be vexed," she made haste to say. "I only wanted to know if--how can I tell--if--well, it looks too pretty to me, this picture of yours."

He gave her a comical side-glance. "Every artist must flatter a little if he wishes to please a lady," was his reply.

"And you give me the picture?" she asked, shyly, after a little pause.

"Why, you ordered it," he replied.

"I--I--thank you," she stammered, then turned away and would have run off.

But he was by no means inclined to let her off so easily. "And my pay?" he cried, catching her in his arms and clasping her so tightly that her little feet were lifted off the daisy-sprinkled turf. "Traitress!" he exclaimed, reproachfully.

She blushed scarlet, although she was but just nine years old; she put her arm around his neck and kissed him directly upon the mouth; his lips were still the lips of a girl. Then she walked away, but she could not hasten from the spot; something seemed to stay her steps. She paused and looked back.

The lad was busied with packing up his small belongings: all the gaiety had vanished from his face, he looked pale and sad again. With her heart swelling with pity, she ran back to him.

"You come for your basket," he said, good-naturedly, holding it out to her.

"No, it isn't that," she replied, shaking her head, as she put down the basket on a willow stump and came close up to him.

In some surprise he smiled down at her. "Something else to ask, my little princess?"

"No,--that is----" She plucked him by the sleeve. "See here," she began, confused and yet coaxingly, "do not be vexed,--only--I thought just now how bad it would be if before you get home you should be treated by somebody else as that man treated you,"--she pointed to the castle,--"and then--and then--oh, I know so well how dreadful it is to have no money. I--please take the guilders: when you are a great artist you can give them back to me." And before he knew what she was doing she had slipped the porte-monnaie into his coat-pocket.

The tears stood in his eyes; he put his arm around her, and looked at her as if to learn her face by heart.

"It might be," he muttered; "perhaps you will bring me luck; I may still come to be something; and if you then should be as dear and pretty as you are now----" He kissed her upon both eyes.

"Rika!" a shrill voice called from a distance.

"Is that your name?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And what is your last name?"

"My step-father's is Strachinsky. I do not know mine."

"Rika!" the shrill tones sounded nearer.

"And what is your name?" she asked him.

Before he could reply, the fluttering skirts of the English governess came in sight: suddenly aroused to a consciousness of her neglected duties, she was looking along the road for her charge.

The little girl clasped her picture close and fled.

When she reached the house she ran up-stairs to put her precious portrait safely away, and then she allowed a clean apron to be put on over her faded frock by the agitated Englishwoman,--whose name was in fact Sophy Lange, and who had been born in Hamburg of honest German parents,--after which she presented herself in the dining-room with an assured air as if unconscious of the slightest wrong-doing.

Her step-father received her with a stern reproof, and instantly inquired where she had been. She replied, curtly, "To the village;" upon which he read her a tremendous lecture upon the enormity of idly wandering about the country, addressing at the same time a few annihilating remarks to the Englishwoman from Hamburg. He had exchanged his bright-blue morning coat for a light summer suit, in which he presented a much better appearance. But he was no more pleasing to his step-daughter in his light-brown costume than in the blue coat with red facings. She paid very little attention to his discourse, but quietly went on eating. Miss Sophy, however, shed tears. The Baron von Strachinsky impressed her greatly; nay, more, she honoured him as a being from a higher sphere. He was popular with women of all ranks, from the lowest to the highest,--why, it would be difficult to tell. He possessed a certain amount of personal magnetism, but it had no effect upon his step-daughter.

They were extraordinarily antipathetic, Strachinsky and his clear-eyed little step-daughter. What she took exception to in him was of so complex and delicate a nature as to defy explanation in words. What annoyed him in her was principally the fact that, in spite of her tender age, she saw through him, was quite free of all illusions with regard to him.

It always increases our regard for our neighbour if he will but view us with flattering eyes. Some few illusions in our behalf we require from those around us; they are absolutely necessary to the pleasure of daily intercourse. But the demands of Herr von Strachinsky in this respect were beyond all reason, while his step-daughter's capacity to comply with them was unusually limited.

Dinner progressed as usual: the gentleman continued to admonish, Miss Sophy to weep, and little Rika to maintain strict silence, until dessert, when Herr von Strachinsky, for whom eating was one of the most important occupations in life, inquired after an almond-cake of which, as he assured the servant, five pieces had been left from breakfast,--yes, five pieces and a little broken one: he had counted them.

The servant repaired to the kitchen for information: the cook could give none, save that she herself had put the cake away in the pantry, whence it had vanished, without a trace, since the morning. Herr von Strachinsky was indignant; he accused every servant in the establishment of the theft, from the foremost of those employed in the house to the lowest stable-boy, and talked of having bars put up at the windows. Little Rika let him give full sweep to his anger; she fairly gloated over his irritation; at last she remarked, indifferently, "What would be the use of bars on the windows, when any one can walk in at the door? It is never locked."

"Silence! what do you know about it?" thundered her step-father.

"Oh, I know all about it," the child quietly replied, "and I know what became of the cake."

"What?"

"I took it. I carried it out to the painter whom you turned out of the house."

Herr von Strachinsky's eyebrows were lifted to a startling extent at this confession. "You--ran--after--that house-painter fellow down the road?" he asked, with a gasp at each word.

"Yes," the child replied, composedly; "and he was not a house-painter fellow, but a young artist, although I should have run after him all the same if he had been a house-painter fellow."

"Indeed! And why?" he asked, with a sneer.

She looked him full in the face. "Why? Because you treated him so badly, and I was sorry for him."

For a moment he was speechless; then he arose, seized the child by the arm, and thrust her out of the door. Without making the least resistance, carelessly humming to herself, she ran up the staircase,--a staircase that turned an abrupt corner and the worn steps of which exhaled an odour of damp decay,--whilst Strachinsky turned to the Englishwoman from Hamburg and groaned, "My step-daughter is a positive torment. I am firmly persuaded that she will end at the galleys."

The galleys were tolerably far removed from the sphere of the Austrian penal code, but Herr von Strachinsky had a predilection for what was foreign, and had recently read a novel in which the galleys played a prominent part.

Meanwhile, little Erika had betaken herself to the drawing-room, a spacious but by no means gorgeous apartment, the furniture of which consisted principally of bookcases and a piano. She seated herself at this piano, and instantly became absorbed in the study of one of Mozart's sonatas, with which she intended to celebrate her mother's return. She had a decided talent for music; her slender little fingers moved with incredible ease over the keys, and her cheeks, usually rather pale, flushed with enthusiasm. It was going very well; she stretched out her foot to touch the pedal,--an act which in her opinion lent the crowning glory to her musical performance,--when suddenly she became aware of a kind of uproar that seemed to fill the house. Dogs barked, servants hurried to and fro, a carriage drove up and stopped before the castle door. Frau von Strachinsky had returned unexpectedly.

The child hurried down-stairs, just in time to see Strachinsky take his wife from the carriage. They kissed each other like lovers,--which seemed to produce a disagreeable impression upon the little girl; moreover, it occurred to her that she did not know whether she might venture forward under existing circumstances. Then she heard her mother say, "And where is Rika?"

Without awaiting her step-father's reply, she rushed into her mother's arms.

"You look finely, darling," the mother exclaimed, patting her little daughter's cheeks. "Have you been a good girl?"

Rika made no reply. Frau von Strachinsky's face took on a sad, troubled expression. Strachinsky frowned, and shrugged his shoulders. His wife looked from him to the child, who had taken her hand and was about to kiss it. "What has she been doing now?" she asked, turning to her husband.

"Not to speak of her behaviour towards myself,--behaviour that is perfectly unwarrantable,--I repeat, unwarrantable," said Strachinsky,--"not to speak of that, the girl has again so far forgotten herself as----well, I will tell you about it by and by."

"Tell now!" the child exclaimed. "I'd rather you would tell now!"

"Hush, Miss Impertinence!" Strachinsky ordered her; then, turning to his wife, he asked, "Do you bring good news? Is your uncle willing?"

Fran von Strachinsky shook her head sadly. "Unfortunately, no,--not quite," she murmured; "but he was very kind; he was enchanted with Bobby." Bobby was Rika's step-brother, whom the poor mother had carried with her upon her distressing journey, perhaps as some consolation for herself, perhaps to soften the hearts of her relatives. He did, indeed, seem admirably adapted to this latter purpose, for he was a charming little fellow, with a lovely pink-and-white face crowned by brown curls, and plump bare arms. His hands at present were filled with toys, which he carried to his sister to console her, since he instantly perceived that she was in disgrace.

"I cannot understand that," Strachinsky murmured. "I should have credited Uncle Nick with a more generous spirit." And he looked sternly at his wife, as if she were responsible for the ill success of her mission.

She laid her hand gently on his arm and said, "You are an incorrigible idealist, my poor Nello: you judge all men by yourself."

And Strachinsky passed his hand over his eyes, and sighed forth sentimentally, "Yes, I am an idealist, an incorrigible idealist, a perfect Don Quixote."

The rest of the afternoon was passed by the pair in the large drawing-room, trying to obtain some clear understanding of the state of Strachinsky's financial affairs,--a very difficult task.

She, pencil in hand, did the reckoning. He paced the room to and fro with a tragic air, and smoked cigarettes. From time to time he uttered some effective sentence, such as, "I am unfit for this world!" or, "Of course a Marquis Posa like myself!"

She sat quietly contemplating the figures with which the sheet before her was filled. Her face grow sad, while her husband's, on the contrary, brightened. Since he was succeeding in casting all his cares upon her shoulders, he felt quite cheerful.

"I never had the least idea of this ten thousand guilders which you tell me you owe," the tortured woman exclaimed, in a sudden access of anger.

"No?" her husband rejoined, with easy assurance. "I surely wrote you about it; or could the trifle have slipped my memory? Yes, now I remember you were with the children at Johannisbad. Löwy came and pestered me with its being such a splendid chance,--told me I had no right to hold back; and so I bought a hundred shares of Schönfeld.' Good heavens! what do I understand of business?--how is such knowledge possible for a gentleman? In the army one never learns anything of the kind, and what can one do save follow advice? I trust others far too readily,--you have always told me so; it is the natural result of the magnanimity of my nature. I blame myself for it. I am an Egmont,--a perfect Egmont. Poor Egmont! There is nothing left for me but to sigh with him, 'Ah, Orange! Orange!'"

Strachinsky imagined that this confession, uttered with an indescribably tragic emphasis, would quite reconcile his wife to his unfortunate speculation. But, to his great surprise, the anticipated result did not ensue. Frau von Strachinsky pushed her thick dark hair back from her temples, and exclaimed, "I cannot understand you; you promised me so faithfully not to speculate in stocks again."

"But, my dear Emma, the opportunity seemed to me so brilliant a one, that I should have thought myself a very scoundrel not to try at least----"

"And you see the result."

"When a man acts conscientiously and with the best intentions, he should not be reproached, even although his efforts result in failure," he said, pompously. "No, my dear Emma, not a word; do not speak now: you will only be sorry for it by and by."

But Emma Strachinsky was not on this occasion to be thus silenced: she was indignant, and almost in despair. "You have always acted with the 'best intentions'!" she exclaimed, hoarse with agitation, "and the result of your good intentions will be to beggar my children. Can you take it ill if I withhold from you my few farthings, that there may be some provision for the children in the future?"

Jagello von Strachinsky looked her over from head to foot. "Your few farthings!" he said, with annihilating severity. "What indelicacy! Well, I shall steer my course accordingly. Do as you choose in future. I have nothing more to say." And, with head haughtily erect, cavalier and martyr every inch of him, he stalked from the room.

She looked after him: she had gone too far; again her impulsiveness had led her astray. Her heart throbbed; she felt sore with agitation, shame, and remorse.

When Erika, towards evening, was playing hide-and-seek with her little brother in the garden, she saw her mother and her step-father strolling affectionately along the gravel path between the hawthorn bushes. He was already rather bald; his limbs were loosely knit; he wore full whiskers, and there was a languishing glance in his eyes, but he was still handsome, in spite of a dissipated air; she was tall, slender, and erect, with large dark eyes, and a pale, noble countenance, that could never, however, have been beautiful. They walked close together, and to a casual observer presented an ideal picture of happy wedded life. And yet when one observed more narrowly--his arm was thrown around her shoulder, and he leaned upon her instead of supporting her; the swing of his heavy frame, the languishing, sentimental expression of his face, everything about him, bespoke a self-satisfied, luxurious temperament; while she----in her eyes there was restless anxiety, and her figure looked as though it were slowly being bowed to the ground by a burden which she was either unable or afraid to shake off.

She walked with a patiently regular step beneath her heavy load. Suddenly she seemed uneasy: she shivered.

"What is it, darling?" Strachinsky asked her, clinging still closer to her.

"Nothing," she murmured, "nothing," and walked on.

They were passing the spot where the little brother and sister were playing, and in the gathering twilight Emma Strachinsky became aware of a pair of clear dark-brown childish eyes that seemed to ask, "How can she love that man?"

Those childish eyes were positively uncanny!

The child's dislike dated from far in the past; it was in fact the first clearly formulated emotion of her little heart. During the first years of her second marriage the mother, prompted by an exaggerated tenderness, had concealed from her little daughter as long as possible the fact that Strachinsky was not her own father: the child had learned the truth by accident. When she rushed to her mother to have what she had heard confirmed, she was received with the tenderest caresses, as though she were to be consoled for a great grief, while she was entreated not to be sad, and was told that "'papa' was far too good and kind to make any difference between herself and his own children, that he loved her dearly," etc.

The mother's caresses were highly prized by the child, all the more that they were rather rare, but on this occasion she could not even seem to enjoy them, since she could not endure to be pitied and soothed for what brought her in reality intense relief.

Her mother perceived this, and it angered her, although at the same time the child's evident though silent dislike made a deep impression upon her. Perhaps the consciousness of its existence in so frank and childish a mind first gave occasion to distrust of the terrible infatuation to which the gifted woman's entire existence had fallen a sacrifice.

Frau von Strachinsky was wont to go herself every evening to see that all was as it should be in the large airy apartment where both the children slept. She hovered noiselessly from one bed to the other, signing the cross upon the brow of each,--an old-fashioned custom to which she still clung although she had long since adopted very philosophical views with regard to religion,--and giving each sleeping child a tender good-night kiss.

The evening after her return she went to the nursery at the usual hour, but lingered only by the crib of the sleeping boy, passing her daughter's bed with averted face. Rika sat up and looked after her; her mother had reached the door without once looking back. This the child could not endure. She sprang out of bed, ran to her mother, and seized her by her skirt. "Mother! mother!" she cried, in a frenzy, "you will not go without bidding me good-night?"

"Let go of my gown," Frau von Strachinsky replied, in a cold voice, which nevertheless trembled with emotion.

"But what have I done, mother?" the child cried, clinging to her passionately.

"Can you ask?" her mother rejoined, sternly.

"Why should I not ask? How should I know what he has told you? I was not by when he accused me."

"Erika! is that the way to speak of your father?" her mother said, angrily.

The little girl frowned. "He is not my father," she declared, defiantly.

Frau von Strachinsky sighed. "Your ingratitude is shocking," she exclaimed, and then, controlling herself with an effort, she added, "But that I cannot alter: you are an unnatural, hard-hearted, stubborn child. I cannot soften your heart, but I can insist that you conduct yourself with propriety, and I forbid you once for all to run after vagabonds in the street. And now go to bed."

"I will not go to bed until you bid me good-night!" cried the child. She stood there with naked little feet, in her white night-gown, over which her long reddish-brown hair hung down. "And I was not so naughty as you think. You ought not to condemn me without giving me time to defend myself."

The child was so desperately reasonable, her mother could not think her wrong, in spite of her momentary anger. She paused. An idea evidently occurred to the little girl. "Only wait one minute!" she exclaimed, as she flew across the room to a drawer where she kept her toys, and, returning with her protégé's water-colour sketch, held it up triumphantly before her mother's eyes. "Look at that!" she cried.

Involuntarily Emma looked. "Where did that come from?" she exclaimed, forgetting her vexation in freshly-aroused interest.

"Do you know who it is?" asked Erika, stretching her slender neck out of the embroidered ruffle of her night-gown.

"Of course; it is your picture. It is charming. Who did it?"

"The vagabond whom I ran after, the house-painter fellow," Erika replied. "At least you can see he was not that, but a young artist."

Her mother was silent.

"Ah, if you had only been at home!" the child's bare feet were growing colder, and her cheeks hotter with excitement, "you would have done just as I did. If you had only seen him! He was very handsome, and so pale and thin and weary with hunger,--why, I could have knocked him down,--and he never begged,--he was too proud,--only held out the portfolio to papa, and his hand trembled----" Suddenly the excitable temperament which the girl had inherited from her mother asserted itself, and she began to sob, her whole childish frame quivering with emotion. "And papa turned him out of doors, and told the cook--to give--to give him two kreutzers. He threw them away--and then--then I ran after him!"

Frau von Strachinsky had grown very pale; the child's agitated story had evidently made an impression upon her, but she did her best to preserve a severe demeanour. "But it is very improper to run after strangers in the street; you are too old."

Erika hung her head, ashamed. "But I should not have done it if papa had not abused him," she declared, by way of excuse. "I did it out of pity for him."

"Pity is a very poor counsellor." Her mother said these words with an emphasis which Erika never forgot, and which was to echo in her soul years afterwards. Then she extricated herself from the child's embrace and left the room, closing the door behind her.

A few minutes afterwards she reopened the door. Little Erika was still standing where she had left her.

"Go to bed," said her mother, in a far more gentle tone, stooping down to kiss her, "and be a better girl another time."

The child clasped her slender little arms tightly about her mother's neck in a strangling embrace, crying, "Oh, mother, mother, you do love me still?" The pale woman did not answer the question, save by a kiss; she waited until the little girl had crept back to bed, and then tucked in the coverlet about her shoulders, and once more left the room.

Erika, precocious child that she was, was a prey to emotions of a very mingled character. She had won a great victory over her step-father,--of this she was well aware,--but then she had grieved her mother sorely. All at once she was seized with profound remorse in recalling to-day's stroke of genius. Beneath her mother's severity she had been sure of having right on her side; now a great uncertainty possessed her. "It is very improper to run after strangers in the street; you are too old," she repeated, meekly, and she grew hot. "What would my mother think if she knew that I had kissed him?"

In the midst of her distress she was overpowered by intense fatigue: her eyelids drooped above her eyes, and with her nightly prayer still on her lips she fell asleep.

Emma von Strachinsky did not sleep; she sat in the bare room adjoining the nursery, the room where she taught Erika her lessons. She wrote two very difficult letters to her husband's creditors, and then proceeded to sew upon a gown for her daughter. She was proud of the child's beauty as only the mother can be who has all her life long been conscious of being obliged to forego the gift of beauty for herself. She loved her daughter idolatrously,--the daughter whom she often treated with a severity verging upon injustice, and whom she sometimes avoided for days because the glance of those clear eyes troubled her.

The windows of the room were open, and looked out upon the road. The fragrance of ripened grain was wafted in from the earth outside, resting from its summer fruitfulness and saturated with the August sunshine. A song floated up through the silent night: the reapers were working by moonlight. The low murmur of the brook accompanied the song, and now and then could be heard the soft swish of the grain falling beneath the scythe. A cricket chirped.

Emma dropped her hands in her lap and gazed into vacancy.

Suddenly she started; a step approached the door of the room, and Strachinsky, smiling sentimentally, entered. "Emma," he said, tenderly, "have you written to Franks and Ziegler?"

"Yes," she replied, and her voice sounded hoarse. "There lie the letters. Read them, and see if they are what you wish."

"Not at all," her husband exclaimed, gaily. "I have implicit confidence in your tact. H'm! the perusal of such letters is a sorry amusement."

"Do you suppose that it was a pleasure to write them?" Emma asked, with some bitterness.

Strachinsky immediately assumed an injured air. "You are irritable again. One cannot venture upon the slightest jest with you. Do you suppose that I enjoy being forced to ask you to write the letters? Good heavens! it is hard enough, but--circumstances will have it so." He passed his hand over his eyes, and stroked his whiskers with an air of great dignity.

She was silent. He watched her for a while, and then said, "That eternal sewing is very bad for you. Come to bed."

"I cannot. I am not sleepy," she replied, plying her needle; "and, moreover, I must finish this frock; let me go on with it." She bent over her work with the air of one determined to complete a task.

Strachinsky stood beside her for a while longer, hesitating and uncertain: he picked up each small article upon the table, looked at it and laid it down again after the fashion of a man who does not know what to do with himself, then he sighed profoundly, yawned, sighed again, and without another word left the room with heavy, lagging footsteps.

When he was gone she laid aside her sewing, and went to the open window to breathe the fresh air. The bluish moonlight shone full upon the whitewashed walls of the peasants' cots crowned with their dark clumsy thatch; in the distance twinkled the little stream winding its plashing way directly across the village towards the river, its banks bordered with curiously-distorted willows that looked like crouching lurking gnomes, and spanned by the huge useless bridge. Bridge, willows, and cots all threw pitch-black shadows out into the glaring splendour of the moonlit night, which was absolutely free from mist and damp. Beyond the village stretched fields of grain and stubble in endless perspective, a surface of tarnished dull gold.

The song was still informing the silence.

At last it ceased, and shortly afterwards heavy, regular steps were heard passing along the road. The reapers were going home. They passed by Emma's windows, a little dark gray crowd of men; the scythes over their shoulders glimmered in the moonlight; then came a couple of women, bowed and weary, almost dropping asleep as they walked; and last of all the overseer, a young fellow whose hand clasped that of a girl at his side. How he bent over her! A low tender whispering sound reached Emma's ears through the dry August air which the night had scarcely cooled. She turned away, frowning. "How happy they look! and why?" she murmured to herself. Suddenly she smiled bitterly. Had she any right to sneer thus at others?--she? Surely if ever a woman lived who had believed in love and had married for love, she was that woman.

And whom had she loved? A poor weakling, who had never been worthy to unloose the latchet of her shoe!

Not only little precocious Erika, every sensible human being who had ever come in contact with the married pair had asked how such a union had been possible. And yet it was so simple a story,--so simple and commonplace,--the story of a woman lacking beauty, but gifted, enthusiastic, prone to romantic exaggeration, whose longing for affection had wrought her ruin.

Her parents belonged to the most ancient if not the most illustrious of the native Bohemian nobility; he was of doubtful descent. She had always been wealthy; he possessed nothing save a scheming brain and a soaring self-conceit that bore him triumphantly aloft through all the annoyances of life.

He was not entirely without talent, had had a good education, and was, previous to his marriage with Emma Lenzdorff, neither idle nor inactive, but possessed of a certain desire for culture, the secret springs of which, however, were to be found in an eager social ambition. At eighteen he entered the army: too poor to join the cavalry, and too arrogant to content himself among the infantry, he joined a Jäger corps. He had risen to the rank of captain when he was wounded in the Schleswig-Holstein campaign. He made his wife's acquaintance in a private hospital in Berlin, which she had arranged in her own house for the martyrs of the aforesaid campaign.

She was very young, very enthusiastic, and a widow,--widow of a cold, unloved northern German whom in accordance with family arrangements she had married while she was yet only a visionary child. The memory of her formal marriage inspired her with horror.

Before meeting Strachinsky she had given scope to her romantic tendencies by all sorts of exaggerated charitable schemes, and by a fanatical devotion to art and poetry. She had long been convinced that her thirst for affection could never be satisfied. No one had ever shown her any passionate devotion, and, conscious of her lack of beauty, she had sadly resigned herself to swell the ranks of those women whom reason might prompt a suitor to woo, but who could never hope to be wooed in defiance of reason.

The Pole had an easy task. That he was handsome even his enemies could not deny. And he knew how to make the most of his personal advantages: a century earlier he might have been taken for a Poniatowski, with a direct claim to the throne of Poland. His uniform was very becoming, and a wounded soldier is always interesting. As soon as he divined the young widow's weakness he wooed her with verses,--with passionate declarations of love.

Poor Emma! Her thirsty heart thrilled with the sudden bursting into bloom of its spring so long delayed! Her parents, who might have warned her of what she was bringing upon herself, were dead; she paid no heed to her mother-in-law, who strenuously opposed her second marriage. When Emma, with burning cheeks, and trembling to her finger-tips with emotion, repeated to her the Pole's exaggerated expressions of devotion, the elder woman rejoined, coldly, "And you believe the coxcomb?"

The words were to Emma like the sting from a whip-lash. "And why should I not believe him?" she asked, sharply. "Because, perhaps, you think me incapable of inspiring a man with affection?"

"Nonsense!" replied the sensible mother-in-law. "You could inspire affection in any honest man with a heart in his bosom, but not in that shallow Pole, that second-rate dandy."

"Perhaps you think him an adventurer, who wooes me for the sake of my money?" Emma exclaimed, indignantly.

"No, I think him a superficial man who, flattered by having made an impression upon a woman of rank, is trying to better his condition. Adventurer! Nonsense! He has not wit enough. An opportunity offers itself, and he embraces it: voilà tout. He is not to blame, but his suit is unworthy of you, and a marriage with him would be a misfortune for you, apart from the fact that you would disgrace your family by it."

When a patient is to be persuaded to take a dose of medicine it ought not to be offered him in an unattractive shape.

The old lady's representations were correct, but they were humiliating. Emma turned away, stubborn and indignant, and a month afterwards married Strachinsky and parted from her mother-in-law forever.

Eight years had passed since then. First came a few months during which Emma revelled in the sensation of loving and being loved, and then--well, the bliss was still there, but a slight shadow had fallen upon it, dimming it, chilling it, a gnawing uneasiness, in the midst of which memory would suddenly suggest the sensible mother-in-law's unsparing predictions.

His marriage put an end to all exertion on Strachinsky's part: it had at a single stroke, as it were, lifted him so far above all for which his ambition had thirsted that he had nothing left to desire, save to enjoy life in distinguished society as far as was possible. With his wife's money he purchased an estate in Bohemia where the soil was the poorest, so great in extent that it made a show in the map of the country, and developed a brilliant talent for hospitality: all the land-owners in the vicinity, all the cavalry-officers from the nearest garrison, were habitués of Luzano, as the estate was called. With his wife's unceasing attentions Strachinsky's self-importance increased, and his regard for her declined. She existed simply to insure his comfort,--for nothing else. The household was turned topsy-turvy when the master's guests appeared, whether invited or unannounced. Strachinsky entertained them with exquisite suppers, at which champagne flowed freely, but at which his wife did not appear. After supper cards were produced, and it was frequently four in the morning before the gentlemen were heard driving away from the castle; sometimes they remained until the next night.

But the day came when Luzano ceased to be a branch of the military casino at K----. The life there suddenly became very quiet, and various disagreeable facts came to light which had been disregarded in the whirl of gaiety. Then first little Erika saw her mother, pencil in hand, patiently adding up her husband's debts, while Strachinsky, his hands clasped behind him, and a cigarette between his teeth, paced the room, dictating amounts to her.

In addition to losses at play and in unfortunate speculations, he had magnanimously put his name to various notes of his distinguished friends.

Emma did not even frown, but exerted herself in every way,--sold her trinkets and almost every valuable piece of furniture, that her husband might meet his liabilities, treating him all the while with the forbearance traditional in model wives, in order to save him from any depressing consciousness of his position.

Was he conscious of it? If he were, he was entirely successful in concealing any consequent depression. The morning after the first painful revelation of his indebtedness, he skipped with the gayest air imaginable into the dining-room, where the family were already assembled at the breakfast-table, and exhorted all present to economize, and especially not to put too much butter on their bread, afterwards discoursing wittily upon 'poverty and magnanimity.'

To lighten his burden,--perhaps to disguise his insensibility from her own heart,--Emma persuaded him that his course had been the result solely of warm-hearted imprudence and an exaggerated nobility of character.

This view of the case was eagerly adopted by his vanity. He paraded his martyr's nimbus, and with a self-satisfied sigh styled himself a Don Quixote.

Nothing could really be farther from Don Quixote's idealistic and unselfish craze than his utter egotism, in its thin veil of sentimentality. And as for his martyrdom, it was easily seen through. None of the misfortunes brought upon himself by himself did he ever allow to affect his existence. He possessed a kind of cunning intelligence that never forsook him, and that enabled him in the midst of ruin to insure his own personal ease.

But how could Emma have borne at that comparatively early period to see him as he really was? She seized upon every excuse for him; she patched up her damaged illusions; she would support, restrain him, develop all that was really noble in him.

In her jealous ambition to make his home so delightful that he would never look for entertainment elsewhere, she exerted herself to the utmost, pandered to his love of eating, even cooked herself when they were no longer able to bear the expense of such a cook as he had been accustomed to, tried to conform her intellectual interests to his lack of any such,--in short, did everything to strengthen the tie between herself and him. She succeeded completely: she made the tie so strong that no loosening of it was possible.

She tried to withdraw him from all outside influences, to win him wholly to herself, and she succeeded; her presence, her tenderness, became an absolute necessity of existence to him; he had never so adored her even during their honeymoon.

Good heavens! now she would have given everything in the world for any breach between them that could be widened beyond all possibility of healing. It was too late; she must drag on the burden with which she had laden herself; it was her duty; she could not sink beneath it; she had no right to.

But in spite of all her efforts her nerves at length gave way. She became irritable. At times she grieved over the change which she saw in him; at other times the thought would suggest itself that this change was merely superficial, that he had never really been any other than at present. Then her blood would seem to run cold; she could have screamed. No, no, she would not see!

There is nothing sadder in this world than the dutiful, tortured life of a woman with a husband whom she has ceased to love.

CHAPTER II.

Full four years had passed by since Erika had kissed the young artist. She recalled the little adventure, which had taken upon itself quite magnificent dimensions in her lively imagination, with secret delight and a vague sense of shame.

Emma was bearing her cross as best she might, but at every step she well-nigh fell exhausted. Her wretchedness not unfrequently found vent in angry words, for which she was sure to repent and apologize.

Her relation with her daughter, now a tall, slender, and unusually clever girl of fourteen, suffered from her general wretchedness. She still loved the child tenderly, but the girl's clear, observant gaze pained her. It had grown much clearer and more penetrating with years.

A certain weight, an oppression, seemed to brood over Luzano like the sense of an impending catastrophe.

The only ray of sunshine in the unhappy wife's gloomy lot was her little son. Out of several children by her second marriage he alone had survived. He was strong and healthy, the darling of all, his sister's idol. Then--he had hardly passed his seventh birthday when he too died.

The little fellow had sickened in the midst of his play, had run to his sister and had fallen asleep with his head in her lap. The girl sat still, not to disturb him, and enjoined silence upon Miss Sophy, who was in the room. The twilight stole gray and vague in upon the bare apartment. The maid-servant--there were no longer any men-servants at Luzano--brought in a lamp, and a plate of rosy-cheeked apples for the children's supper. The boy opened his eyes, but closed them again with a low moan and turned his head away from the light.

His mother appeared, saw at a glance how matters stood, and put the little fellow to bed. She did not come down to supper, and when Erika went, as was her wont, to say good-night to her brother, she was not allowed to enter his room. The next morning the doctor was sent for.

Whilst he was in the sick-room Erika was taking her daily lesson in English with Miss Sophy, with no thought of any trouble. She was learning by heart her scene from Shakespeare, when her mother suddenly put her head in at the door and said, "Diphtheria!" The tone of her voice and the expression of her face were such as to terrify the girl. But when Erika, trembling with dread, ran towards her, she waved her off and vanished.

Miss Sophy was established in the sick-room, which Erika was not allowed to enter. No one paid her any attention, and she spent hours forlornly watching at the end of a long gloomy corridor the door behind which so much that was terrible was going on. If she was seen she was sent away; but before long the entire household was too anxious to pay her the slightest heed.

It was about eleven in the forenoon of the fifth day since the first symptoms of the disease had appeared. Erika stood listening eagerly near the door, trembling with a sense of something vaguely terrible going on behind it. Suddenly it opened, and her mother staggered out, her dress disordered, her face distorted with agony, and supported by the little boy's nurse. Behind her came Strachinsky, his handkerchief at his eyes.

In absolute terror Erika looked after her mother, who passed her by, even brushing her with her skirt, without seeing her. Then she entered the room which the wretched woman had just left. The bed was covered with a white sheet, which revealed the outline of the little form beneath it. The girl's heart throbbed almost to bursting. She lifted a corner of the sheet: there lay her little brother, dead, so white, and with his sweet face unchanged by disease. The little hands lay half open upon the coverlet, as though life had just slipped from them. A grace born of death hovered above the entire form. His sister gazed in tearless distress. She could not cry; she felt no definable pain, only a terrible heaviness in her limbs, and a weight upon her heart that almost choked her. She bent over the corpse to kiss it, when Miss Sophy rushed into the room, seized her by the arm, and thrust her out of the door.

Of course the first thing Erika did was to look for her mother. She found her in the morning-room, seated in a large arm-chair, quivering in every limb. Minna, the nurse, was moistening her forehead with cologne, but she seemed entirely unconscious. Her hands were folded in her lap, and her gaze was fixed on vacancy. Erika could not summon the courage to approach her.

Meanwhile, Strachinsky was pacing the room in long strides: his tears were already dried; every now and then he would pause and heave a profound sigh. At first Emma seemed not to notice him, but on a sudden she roused from her apathy, and, passing her hand over her brow, with a feeble, wailing cry, she said, "For God's sake, stop, Nello!"

He paused, cleared his throat several times, took an English penknife from his pocket, began to pare his nails, and then went to his wife and stroked her cheek. She shrank from him involuntarily.

He groaned feelingly, left her, and went to the window: with one hand he stroked his whiskers, with the other he jingled the keys in his pocket.

After a while he began in an undertone, probably with the foolish expectation of distracting the wretched mother's thoughts, to detail what was going on outside, all in a melancholy, sentimental monotone, that would have set healthy nerves on edge. "Ah, see that little sparrow with a straw in its beak! it must be fitting up its winter nest."

Poor Emma sat bolt upright, except that her head inclined somewhat forward, and gazed at the man at the window.

Suddenly she uttered a short, shrill scream, and, pressing both hands to her temples, rushed out of the room.

When she had gone Strachinsky shrugged his shoulders, sighed as if gross injustice had been done him, and retired to his room to make a list of the names of all those whom he wished notified of the death.

The funeral took place the third day afterwards.

On that day they assembled at the dinner-table as on other days. The poor mother ate nothing, and Erika could scarce swallow a morsel. The tears which had refused to come at first were falling fast upon her new black gown.

Strachinsky ate, but after a while he too pushed his plate away. For the first time in her life his stepdaughter was conscious of an emotion of compassion for him. She thought that his grief had made eating impossible, when he cleared his throat, and, "This is intolerable," he whined; "at best I have no appetite, and here is tomato sauce! You know I never eat tomato sauce."

His wife made no reply: she only looked at him with her strange new gaze, with eyes from which the last veil had fallen, and which were pained by the light. The look in those eyes would have made one shudder.

The clock in the castle tower struck one quarter of an hour after another, bringing ever nearer the time for the interment. The little body was already laid in the coffin. The coffin-lid leaned up against the wall. A fierce restlessness, the strained expectation of a certain moment which was to be the culmination of an intolerable misery, possessed Erika: she hurried from place to place, and at last ran after her mother, who had gone into the garden.

It was cold and stormy. The autumn had come late and suddenly. Some bushes had kept all their leaves, but they were blackened and shrivelled; others had retained only a few red and yellow leaflets that fluttered in the wind. The trees, on the other hand, were almost entirely bare. The naked boughs showed dark gray or purplish brown against the cloudy sky: the birches alone could still boast some golden-coloured foliage. On the moist gravel paths and the sodden autumn grass lay wet brown leaves mingled with those but lately fallen. The asters and chrysanthemums, nipped by the first frost, hung their heads, and among all the autumnal decay the poor mother wandered about, seeking a few fresh flowers to lay in her dead child's coffin. With faltering steps, tripping now and then over the skirt of her gown, she tottered from one ruined flower-bed to another. The sharp autumn wind fluttered her dress and outlined her emaciated limbs. From her lips came a low moaning mingled with caressing words. She kissed the few poor flowers, frost-touched, which she held in her hand. Erika walked close behind her. Once or twice she stretched out her hand to grasp her mother's skirt, but withdrew it hastily, as if fearing to hurt her by even the gentlest touch.

Ten minutes afterwards the sharp strokes of a hammer resounded through the castle, and the unhappy woman was crouching in the farthest corner of her room, her hands held tightly to her ears.

In the night following the funeral Erika was waked from sleep by a low moan. She started up. By the vague light of early dawn, in which the windows were defined amid the darkness, she saw something dark lying upon the floor beside her bed. She cried out in terror, and then it stirred. It was her mother lying there upon the hard floor, where she must have been for some time, for when Erika touched her she was icy-cold. The girl took her in her arms and drew her into the soft warm bed beside her. Neither spoke one word, but their hearts beat in unison: all discord between them had vanished.

She had thrown off her burden; she breathed anew; she would stand erect once more. Then she discovered that a heavier burden yet, a fresh tie, bound her to the husband whom now, stripped of all illusion, she detested. The consciousness of this misfortune crept over her slowly; at first she would not believe it, and when she could no longer doubt, it seemed to her that her reason must give way.

Erika soon perceived that her mother's misery was not due alone to the loss of her child. No, that pain brought with it a tender and gentle mood. Another burden oppressed her, something against which her entire nature angrily rebelled, and under the weight of which she displayed a gloomy severity from which her daughter alone never suffered. Towards her since the boy's death Emma had shown inexpressible tenderness, and the girl, thirsting for affection, was never weary of nestling close in her mother's arms, receiving her caresses with profound gratitude, almost with devout adoration. Sometimes the mother would smile in the midst of her grief as she stroked the gold-gleaming hair back from her child's pale face with its large dark eyes. "They do not see it," she would murmur, "but I see how pretty you are growing. Poor little Erika! you have had a sad youth; but life will atone to you for it when I am no longer here."

"Do not say that!" cried the girl, clasping her mother in her arms. "As if I could endure life without you! Mother! mother!"

"You do not dream of what can be endured," her mother said, bitterly. "One submits. Learn to submit; learn it as soon as may be. Do not ask too much from life; ask for no complete happiness: it is an illusion. You, indeed, are justified in claiming more than your poor, ugly mother had any right to, my beautiful, gifted child!" She uttered the words almost with solemnity. Something of the romantic strain which had characterized her through every stage of her prosaic, humiliating existence came to light now in her worship of her daughter.

She strongly impressed Erika with the idea that she was an exceptional creature, and, although she was always admonishing her to expect nothing of life, she nevertheless gave her to understand that life was sure to offer something extraordinary for her acceptance. On the whole, in spite of the girl's grief at the loss of her little brother, she would have been happier than ever before had it not been for a growing anxiety with regard to her mother, whose health had entirely given way. Whereas she had been wont from early morning until late at night to make her presence felt throughout the household and on the estate, grasping with a firm and skilled hand the reins which her husband had idly dropped, now she took an interest in nothing.

Erika was tortured by anxiety, an anxiety all the more distressing from the fact that she could not define her fears.

Towards her husband Emma displayed a daily increasing irritability. But his easy content was not at all disturbed by it. Thanks to a fancy which was ever ready to devise means for sparing and nourishing his self-conceit, he discovered a hundred reasons other than the true one for his wife's attitude towards him. Her irritability was all due, so he informed Miss Sophy, to her situation. And in receiving Miss Sophy's admiring and compassionate homage he found, and had found for some time, his favourite occupation.

Emma now lived apart in a large room, which, besides her bed and wash-stand, was furnished only with a couple of book-shelves, two straight-backed chairs covered with horsehair, and a round tiled stove decorated with a rude bas-relief of a train of mad Bacchantes and bearing on its level top a large funeral urn. The boards of the floor were bare, and in a deep window-recess there was an arm-chair. In this chair the miserable woman would sit for hours, her elbows resting upon its arms, her hands clasped, staring into vacancy.

In the garden upon which this window looked the snow lay several feet deep; upon the meadow beyond, which sloped gently to the broad frozen river, and upon its icy surface, it was so deep that meadow and river were undistinguishable from each other; upon the dark pine forest that bounded the horizon--upon everything--it lay cold and heavy. All cold!--all white! Huge drifts of snow; no road definable; never a bird that chirped, never a leaf that stirred; all cold and white, without pulsation, without breath, dead,--the whole earth a lovely stark corpse.

And the wretched woman's gaze could fall upon naught outside save this white monotony.

Spring came. The dignified repose of death dissolved in feverish activity, in the restless change of seasons, vibrating between fair and foul, between purity and its opposite.

The earth absorbed the snow, except where in dark hollows it lingered in patches, to disappear slowly in muddy pools.

Emma still sat for hours daily in her room with hands clasped in her lap, but her eyes were no longer fixed on vacancy; they had found an object upon which to rest. Among the tender green of the meadows so lately stripped of their snowy covering, glided the river, dark and swollen. How loudly it exulted in its liberation from its icy fetters! "Freedom!" shouted its surging waves,--"Freedom!"

Upon this river her gaze was now riveted.

Days passed,--weeks; the air was warm and sweet; the window by which she sat was open, and the voice of the river was clear and loud.

One afternoon at the end of April the ploughs were creaking over the road, there was an odour of freshly-turned earth in the air, and the fruit-trees were already enveloped in a white mist.

The sun had set, and in the west the crescent moon hung pale and shadowy.

Erika was standing at the low garden wall, looking down across the meadow. Her youthful spirit was oppressed by anxiety so vague that she could neither define it nor struggle against it: she seemed to be blindly dragged along to meet the inevitable.

Her mother had to-day been especially tender to her, but sadder than ever before. She had talked as if her death were nigh at hand, and had spent a long time in writing letters.

On a sudden the girl perceived a dark object moving rapidly along in the warm damp evening air,--a tall figure in a black gown which fluttered in the south wind. It was her mother.

How quickly she strode through the high rank grass! how strange was her gait! Erika had never before seen any one hasten thus, with long strides, and yet falteringly as though borne down by weariness, on--on towards the dark-flowing river.

Suddenly the girl divined what her mother intended to do. She would have screamed, but for an instant her voice failed her, and in the next she was silent from presence of mind, the clear-sight of terror.

She clambered over the low wall and flew after her mother, her feet scarcely touching the ground, her breath coming in painful gasps.

The dark figure had reached its goal, the river-bank; it leaned forward,--when two nervous, girlish hands clutched the black folds of her gown. "Mother!" shrieked Erika, in despair.

She turned round. "What do you want?" she said, harshly, almost cruelly, to her daughter. Then she shuddered violently, and burst into a convulsive sobbing which it seemed impossible to her to control.

Her daughter put her arm around her, nestled close to her, and kissed the tears from her cheeks. "Mother," she cried, tenderly, "darling mother!" and without another word she gently led the wretched woman away from the water. The mother made no resistance; she was mortally weary, and leaned heavily upon the slender girl of fourteen.

They slowly returned to the house. A white translucent mist was rising from the fields, and flying through it with drooping wings, so low that they almost stirred the grass, a flock of hoarsely-croaking ravens passed them by.

In the night Erika suddenly aroused from sleep, without knowing what had wakened her. She rubbed her eyes, and turned to sleep again, when just outside of her door she heard a voice exclaim, "Ah, God of heaven!" In an instant, barefooted and in her nightgown, she was in the corridor, where she saw the cook hurrying in the direction of her mother's room. "What is the matter?" the girl cried, in terror. The cook looked round, shrugged her shoulders, and hurried on.

Erika would have followed her, but Strachinsky appeared at the turning of the corridor where the cook had vanished. He looked as if just roused from sleep; he had on a flowered dressing-gown, and carried a lighted candle. Beside him Minna walked, pale as ashes.

Strachinsky set the candlestick down upon a long low table in the passage. "Have the horses harnessed immediately," he ordered, "and send the bailiff to K---- for the doctor."

"Will not the Herr Baron go himself? People are not always to be relied upon," said Minna, with a significant glance at the master of the house.

"Oh, no; the bailiff will attend to it perfectly, and then--you can understand that I do not wish to be away at this time from my wife, who will of course ask for me----" Minna's eyes still being fixed upon him with a very strange expression in them, he added, snapping out his words in childish irritation, "And then--then--it is no business of yours, you stupid fool!" And, turning on his heel, he left her.

Minna shrugged her shoulders, and turned towards the staircase to give the necessary orders.

Neither she nor Strachinsky had noticed Erika. The girl ran to the nurse and plucked her by the sleeve. "Minna," she asked, in dread, "what is the matter? Is my mother ill?"

"Yes."

"What is the matter with her? Tell me, Minna! oh, tell me!"

But the nurse shook off her clasping hands. "Let me alone, child. I am in a hurry," she murmured.

Erika advanced a step, hesitated, and then returned to her room, where she found Miss Sophy in great distress, her head crowned with curl-papers, which she cut out of the Modern Free Press every evening and which made her look half like Medusa and half like a porcupine.

"Where are you going?" she asked, seeing that Erika began to dress hurriedly. "To my mother; she is ill."

Miss Sophy gently detained her. "Do not go," she said, softly: "they would not let you in; you would only be in the way, now. Wait a little. Your mother does not want you there." And she wagged her porcupine head with melancholy solemnity as she added, "I believe--I think you will perhaps have a little brother, or sister."

Erika stared at her. This it was, then!

Among the many sad experiences that were to fall to Erika's lot there were none to equal the dull restlessness, the mortal dread mingled with a mysterious, inexpressible emotion, of these hours.

She went on dressing, striving only to be ready quickly, as one dresses when the next house is on fire. Then she seated herself opposite Miss Sophy, at a tottering round table upon which stood a guttering candle.

For a while all was silent; then there was a noise outside the door. The girl sprang up and hurried out, to see a stout, elderly woman in a tall black cap, with the phlegmatic flabby face of a monk, going towards her mother's room. Erika recognized her as the needy widow of a stone-mason; she was wont to doctor both men and cattle in the village. Her name was Frau Jelinek. The scullery-maid who had brought her was just behind her.

They passed Erika without heeding her, and the girl looked after them in a fresh access of dread.

Two hours passed. Miss Sophy was asleep; Erika still waked and watched. A light rain had begun to fall; the drops pattered against the window-panes.

Once more Erika arose and crept out into the corridor. Trembling in every limb, she stood at the door of the room through which her mother's sleeping-apartment was reached. It was ajar, and light streamed through the crack. She looked in. Strachinsky was seated at a table, playing whist with three dummies. It had for some time past been his favourite occupation. A maid stood in a corner, arranging a pile of linen. Erika was about to address her, when Frau Jelinek, her black leathern bag on her arm, came out of her mother's bedroom.

"May I not go to mamma,--just for a moment?" the girl asked, in an agitated whisper.

The bedroom door opened again, and Minna appeared. "Is it you, child?"

"Yes, yes," Erika made answer.

"Do not disturb your mother. Stay in your room till you are called," Minna said, authoritatively.

And from the room came the poor mother's weary, gentle voice: "Go lie down, my child; don't sit up any longer; go to bed, dear."

For a while Erika stood motionless; then she kissed the hard cold door that would not open to her, and went back to her room. She lay down on the bed, dressed as she was, and this time she fell asleep. On a sudden she sat upright. The candle on the table was still burning, and by its light she saw that Miss Sophy, who had been sleeping on the sofa, was sitting up, awake, and listening, with a startled air.

Erika hurried out; Minna met her in the corridor, and at the same moment a vehicle rattled into the courtyard.

"The doctor!" exclaimed Minna. "Thank God!"

The bailiff appeared on the staircase.

"Where is the doctor?"

"He was not at home," the man made answer.

"Did you not ask where he was and go after him?" Minna asked, impatiently.

"No," replied the bailiff, twirling his straw hat in his hands. "But I left word for him to come as soon as he got home."

"Fool!" Strachinsky, who had now come into the corridor, exclaimed, shaking his fist at the man. "You are dismissed," he added, grandiloquently. Then, turning to Minna, he said, "Good heavens, if I had a horse I could ride to K----."

Without heeding him, Minna hurried down the staircase, and a few moments later a carriage again left the court-yard.

Minna had herself gone for the doctor, before her departure beseeching Erika to keep quiet: she should be summoned as soon as it would be right for her to see her mother.

The girl obeyed, and sat in her room, rigid and motionless, at the table where the candle was burning down into the socket. At first, to shorten the time, she tried to knit, but the needles dropped from her fingers.

Miss Sophy sat opposite her, with elbows upon the table, and her head in her hands, listening.

In the distance there was a sound of wheels; it came nearer and nearer. Thank God! It was Minna, and she brought the doctor. There was a hurried running to and fro, and then all was still, still as death.

The dawn crept in at the window. The flame of the candle burned red and dim. The rain had ceased, and through the misty window-panes could be seen a glimmer of white blossoms, and behind them a pale-blue sky in which the last stars were slowly fading.

Then the door opened, and Minna entered. "Come, Erika," she said, in a low voice.

Erika arose hastily. "Have I really a little brother?" she asked, anxiously.

Minna shook her head. "It is dead."

"And my mother?"

"Ah, come quickly."

She drew the girl along with her through the long whitewashed corridor. In the room leading to the dying woman's chamber Strachinsky was standing with the physician. The latter stood with bowed head; Strachinsky was weeping.

Erika went directly to her mother's bedside. The dying woman's hair was brushed back from her temples; her lips were blue. Erika kneeled down and buried her face in the bedclothes. Her mother laid her hand upon her head and stroked it--ah, how feebly! But how soothing was the touch!

In one corner old Minna kneeled, praying.

Outside, the world was brightening; there was a golden splendour over all the earth. The birds twittered, at first faintly, then loudly and shrilly. The dying woman stirred among the pillows: Erika was to hear the dear voice once more.

"My child, my poor, dear child, I have been a poor mother to you----"

"Oh, mother, darling----"

"My death will make it all right. Write to----"

At this moment Strachinsky knocked at the door. "Emma!" he whispered.

The dying woman's face expressed positive horror. "Do not let him come in!" she exclaimed.

Erika flew to the door and turned the key; when she returned to the bedside her mother was struggling for breath.

Evidently most anxious to impart some information to her daughter, she had not the strength to do so. Once more she passed her hand over Erika's head,--it was for the last time; then the hand grew heavier; it no longer lavished a caress; it was a mere weight.

Erika moved, and looked at her mother. The tears stood in her eyes unshed, so wondrous was her mother's face. The battle was won.

All the pain of life--the sweet pain of supreme rapture hinting to us of that heaven which we cannot attain, and that other bitter pain pointing to the grave at which we shudder--was for her extinct.

Erika threw herself upon the body and covered it with kisses. With difficulty could she be induced to leave it; but when they led her from the room, as soon as the door closed behind her she was docile and gentle. She seemed bewildered, and walked slowly with bowed head beside Minna. Once only she looked back when a thin, melancholy wail resounded through the quiet morning air. It was the bell in the little tower of the castle, tolling restlessly.

Years afterwards she could not bring herself to recall in memory the terrible days that followed,--the dreary burden that she dragged about with her from morning until night, the sleep born of utter exhaustion, the slow pursuance of daily custom as in a dream, the awakening with nerves refreshed by forgetfulness, and then the sudden consciousness of misery, the sensation of soreness in every limb, a sensation intensified by every motion, by a word spoken in her presence, the restlessness which drove her hither and thither until in some dim corner she would crouch down and cry,--cry until the very fount of tears seemed dry and her burning eyes would close again in the leaden sleep which still had to yield to the terrible awakening.

She felt the most earnest desire to do something, to perform some office of love for her mother; but scarcely for one moment was she left alone with the body.

Strangers prepared the loved one for the tomb, the coachman and the gardener lifted her into the coffin. Shortly before it was closed, Strachinsky remembered that his wife had once expressed a wish to be buried in the dress and veil she had worn at her marriage with him. But neither could be found. The cabinet where she was wont to hoard her treasures was empty, except for a lock of hair of her dead boy, and this they laid beneath her head.

Her husband bestowed but little thought upon the circumstance. He honestly regretted the dead, and lost his appetite for two days; but as the time for the funeral drew near, he worked himself into an exalted frame of mind, which found vent in solemn pomposity.

He had ordered a hearse from the city. Erika was standing at a window of the corridor when, with nodding plumes, it rattled into the castle court-yard, and her misery reached the point of despair.

Until then she had not quite comprehended it all. She heard the men stagger down the stairs beneath the weight of the coffin, heard it knock against the wall at a sharp turn.

She followed it to the grave. All walked behind the hearse, the shabby splendour of which suited so ill with the rural landscape.

Most of the gentry of the surrounding country, who had long since ceased to visit at Luzano, assembled to pay the last honours to the poor woman, but they were only a speck in the endless funeral train. Behind the few black coats and high hats following close upon the hearse came a swarming crowd. All the peasants, day-labourers, and beggars from Luzano and the surrounding estates paid the last token of respect to the martyr gone to her eternal rest: she had been good and kind to all.

It was the first of May. The fields were clothed in a light green, and the apple-trees showed pink with half-open blossoms. A reddish smoke curled upward to the skies from the flames of the torches. And there was a flutter of sighs among the blossoming boughs of the trees and above the meadows,--the breath of the freshly-born spring.

Through the new life strode death.

Noiselessly the funeral train moved on. Erika walked almost mechanically, looking neither to the right nor to the left, only moving forward. On a sudden something attracted her gaze. On a little elevation by the roadside, between two apple-trees, stood a young peasant woman with a child in her arms,--a child who stared at the long procession with large eyes of wonder.

CHAPTER III.

The day after the funeral Strachinsky, in melancholy mood, paced to and fro in the room where his wife had died. From time to time he walked to the window and looked out,--then he would turn again towards the interior of the chamber. Suddenly his eyes fell upon a sheet of blotting-paper left upon the writing-table.

His wife's handwriting had been remarkably large, and the words which were of course imprinted backwards upon the sheet attracted his notice. With very little trouble he deciphered them: "My last will."

He frowned. "So she has made a fresh will," he said to himself. In spite of his enormous self-conceit, he did not doubt that it could hardly be in his favour. The blood rushed to his head. Where was the will? Probably in her writing-table. But where were the keys? The shrewdness which, in spite of his intellectual deterioration, stood him in stead whenever he feared personal inconvenience came to his aid. He remembered that his wife had been wont to keep her keys in the drawer of a small table at her bedside, and he reflected that, in the sad confusion ensuing upon her death, it was hardly likely that they had as yet been removed. In fact he found them there, and with them he opened the middle drawer of her writing-table. It contained a large sealed envelope inscribed "My last will." Strachinsky slipped the document into his pocket, and returned the keys to their place.

At that moment the door opened, and Erika entered. She looked wretchedly pale and wan, with dark rings around her weary eyes. She wore a black gown which her mother had made hastily for her when her little brother died, and which she had outgrown during the winter. Although the day was warm and sunshiny, she looked cold, and in all her movements there was something of the timorous hesitation that a dog will display after losing his master, when he seems uncertain where to creep away and hide himself. The resolute attitude she had been wont to maintain when with her step-father was all gone; heart, mind, and soul seemed alike crushed.

"What do you want here?" Strachinsky asked, suspiciously.

She looked at him in what was almost surprise, and a tremor of pain passed through her. "What should I want?" she murmured, in a hoarse whisper. "I want to go to my mother!" She said it to herself, not to him; she seemed to have forgotten his presence. Her chin trembled, her lips twitched, the tears rushed to her eyes.

No, that pitiable creature never could have come to look for a will. Strachinsky, always ready to be sentimental, gave a sigh of relief, put his hand over his eyes, and left the room. Scarcely had he gone when Erika's sad eye fell upon the bed: it had been stripped of all its coverings and looked like some couch in a lumber-room that had been unused for years. With a shudder the girl turned away. Yes, what could she want here? She asked herself the question now. But on a sudden she perceived hanging on the wall a black skirt, the hem soiled with mud. It was the gown her mother had worn when she hurried across the fields, the day before her death. Erika clutched it as if it had been a living thing, and with a low wail buried her face in its folds, about which some aroma of her dead mother seemed to cling.

Meanwhile, Strachinsky had locked himself into his room, where he walked to and fro, lost in reflection, the portentous will in his pocket, with the seal as yet unbroken. The only legal document of the kind, in his opinion, was the will made by his wife eleven years previously, shortly after their marriage, by which she constituted him her sole heir and the guardian of her daughter. Any later testamentary disposition he could not possibly regard otherwise than as the result of an aberration of mind, of which she had for some time shown symptoms, and which had, shortly before her death, come to be distinctly developed.

Poor Emma! There was no doubt that her intellect, once so clear and strong, had been clouded of late years.

So soon as he had entirely convinced himself of this fact, he broke the seal of the will.

Even in his rascality he was a thorough sentimentalist. He never could have committed a crime without first skilfully contriving to exalt in his own eyes both himself and his motives.

Whilst reading the document he changed colour several times. When he had finished he sighed thrice consecutively: "Poor Emma!" Then, after pacing the room thoughtfully, he said to himself, "She would be indeed distressed if this paper--worthless legally in view of her mental condition, and throwing so false a light upon our marriage--should ever be made public; she--to whom the tie between us was so sacred!" A flood of proofs of his wife's devotion to him, interrupted but temporarily, overwhelmed Strachinsky's soul. He lit a candle and burned Emma's last will.

And then, without the slightest pricking of conscience, he betook himself to his beloved lounge. He had the sensation of having performed an act of exalted devotion.

"No need, dearest Emma," he said, apostrophizing his wife's portrait which hung above his couch, "to say that I never shall let your child want. No legal document is necessary to insure that. Poor Emma!" And, remembering the extract-books which he had devised at a former period of his existence, he moaned, drearily, "Oh, what a noble mind was there o'erthrown!"

When, a few hours afterwards, he encountered his step-daughter, he felt it incumbent upon him to be especially kind to her. He patted her shoulder, with the insinuating tenderness people are apt to show towards those whom they have wronged, and said, solemnly, "Poor little Rika! Your loss is great. Your mother is gone; but never forget that you still have a father."

Weeks passed,--months; everything in the house went on as best it could. Strachinsky lay on the sofa from morning until night, reading novels most of the time. In the pauses of this edifying occupation he roused himself to an unedifying activity; that is to say, he scolded all the servants, without assigning any grounds for his displeasure. No one minded it much: every one knew that after such an episode he would betake himself to his sofa again and to his sentimental romances.

With regard to his step-daughter's education, he showed the same tendency to vehement attacks of zeal. He would suddenly go to the school-room, inspect her written exercises, question her as to some historical date which he had quite forgotten himself, and conclude by asking her to play something upon the piano.

During her performance he would pace the room with a face expressive of the gravest anxiety.

At first she took pains to play for him, but when she discovered that he had determined beforehand to find fault, she rattled away upon the keys of her old instrument like a perfect imp of waywardness, whenever required to show what progress she had made.

Almost before her fingers had left the key-board the scolding began. "I see no improvement; no, not the slightest improvement do I perceive! And to think of all that has been done for your education! I fairly work my fingers to the bone to give you every advantage that a princess could claim, while you--you do nothing!" And then would follow a long dramatic summary of the sacrifices that had been made for her. He always talked to her like the father addressing a worthless daughter in some popular melodrama, ending upon every occasion with, "What is to become of you? Tell me, what--what will become of you?" Then he would bring down both fists upon the top of the piano, to emphasize the horror inspired by the thought of her future, shake his head for the last time, and leave the room with a heavy stride. Afterwards he was sure to complain of the injury the agitation had caused him, and to betake himself to his sofa.

The girl was left more and more to herself. About six months after her mother's death Miss Sophy was dismissed. She was a thoroughly capable woman, personally much attached to her pupil, trustworthy and practical as a housekeeper, but prone to fall in love with every man, and to find a rival and foe in every woman who refused to be the confidante of her morbid and distorted sentimentality.

During Emma's lifetime she had been able to conceal most of her eccentricities in this respect, but afterwards she became positively intolerable,--perhaps because there was no one to restrain or intimidate her. Without a single personal attraction, she was inordinately vain, forever striving by her dress and conduct to invite attention from the other sex. In the forenoons she gave Erika lessons, in the afternoons she mended and made her clothes,--she was a skilled needlewoman,--and the evenings she devoted to music.

She sang. Her répertoire was limited, consisting principally of the soprano part of Mendelssohn's duet "I would that my love could silently flow in a single word," which she shrieked out as a solo, and in Schumann's "I'll not complain,"--which last always caused her to shed copious tears.

At last her love of self-adornment as well as her musical enthusiasm passed all bounds. She cut off her hair, dressed it in short curls, and purchased two new silk gowns. She also bought an old zither, and every evening, with her hair freshly curled, and in a rustling silk robe, she betook herself to the drawing-room, where Strachinsky, in pursuance of his boasted activity, was wont to finish the day by endless games of patience.

Her manner, the languishing looks cast at him over her instrument, left no doubt as to her sentiments towards him.

At first the master of the house took but little heed of these demonstrations. Her performance upon the zither he found rather agreeable: the whining drawl of the tones she evoked from it soothed his melancholy. But one evening when he had requested her to play for him "The Tyrolean and his Child," and also to repeat "May Breezes," she was so carried away by triumphant vanity that she attempted to sing with her instrument, accompanying her shrill notes with such languishing glances that their object could no longer ignore their meaning.

The next morning Strachinsky sent for his stepdaughter. Clad in his dressing-gown, as he reclined upon his lounge, with all the romantic drawling indifference in his air and voice which he had learned from his favourite hero "Pelham," he asked her as she stood before him,--

"The Englishwoman's behaviour must have struck you as extraordinary?"

She nodded.

He passed his hand thoughtfully across his brow. She did not speak, and he went on playing the English nobleman to his own entire satisfaction. His left hand, in which he held a French novel, hanging negligently over the arm of the lounge, he waved his right in the air, and said, "Of course I pity the poor creature, but she bores me. Rid me of the fool, I pray,--rid me of her!"

He then inclined his head towards the door, and buried himself in the perusal of his novel.

From that time Erika ceased to spend the evenings with Miss Sophy in the drawing-room; she withdrew after supper to the solitude of the old school-room, which in fact she greatly preferred.

Of course Miss Sophy suspected some plot of Erika's in Strachinsky's altered demeanour, and lost every remnant of sense still left in her silly head. She employed all her leisure moments in writing to her hero letters which she bribed the maid to lay upon the table in his dressing-room.

This would all have been ridiculous, if the affair had not taken a tragic turn.

One morning Miss Sophy did not appear at the breakfast-table, and when Minna went to call her she found the wretched woman in bed, writhing in agony. In despair at Strachinsky's insensibility she had poisoned herself with the tips of some old lucifer matches. The physician, summoned in haste, was barely able to save her life; and of course she left Luzano as soon as she was able to travel.

Strachinsky was much flattered that the poor woman's love for him had ended in madness, and he invested her memory with an ideal excellence, recalling her as brilliantly gifted by nature and endowed with many personal attractions.

Erika was now left without instruction. Her step-father decided that a young girl of her age needed no further supervision, and that the daughter of a poor farmer could lay no claim to any personal luxury.

When he spoke of himself only, it was always as an 'impoverished cavalier;' when he alluded to himself as her father, he was always degraded to simply 'a poor farmer.'

All through the summer she was alone, and during a long dreary winter, followed by another summer and another winter, she was still alone. Another girl in her place might have fallen into gossip with the servants to pass the time; another, again, might have married the bailiff out of sheer ennui: assuredly any one else would have grown stupid and uncouth. She did nothing of the kind.

She had occupation enough. She learned long pages of Goethe and Shakespeare by heart, and declaimed them, clad in improvised costumes, before a tall dim mirror; she played on the piano for hours daily, and made decided progress, despite certain bad habits unavoidable in the lack of instruction. The rest of her time was spent in building numberless castles in the air, and in taking long walks about the neighboring country.

But when three years had gone by since her mother's death, without the least alteration in her circumstances, the poor child began to be impatient and to look eagerly about for some relief from so sordid an existence. Why could she not be an artist?--an actress, a singer, or a pianist?

On a cold spring morning towards the end of April she seated herself at the big table in her former school-room and indited a letter to the director of the Castle Theatre at Vienna,--a letter in which she partially explained to him her position and requested him to make a trial of her dramatic talent, with a view to an engagement at his theatre. She declared herself ready to go to Vienna if he would promise her an audience. She had finished the clearly-written document, but when about to sign her name she hesitated. Erika Lenzdorff she signed at last. "Lenzdorff," she repeated, thoughtfully,--"Lenzdorff." What possessed her to write to the director of a theatre--an utter stranger--explaining her circumstances? Would it not be much better to turn to her father's relatives? To be sure, she knew nothing about them,--not even their address; but that, she thought, might be procured. Her mother had never spoken of them; she had always abruptly changed the subject when Erika asked about her father and his relatives. Why?

Strachinsky and his wife had often spoken of the parents of the latter, but never of those of her first husband.

"Lenzdorff." She wrote the name again and again on a sheet of paper. It looked distinguished. Perhaps they were wealthy people, who could do something for her; but----

Emma had told her daughter that her name was Lenzdorff the day after the adventure with the young painter, when the child, mortified at not having been able to tell it, had asked what it was. But when she had precociously repeated, in a questioning tone, "Von Lenzdorff?" her mother had replied, sternly, "What is that to you? It is of no consequence whatever."

Erika began to ponder. Her mother's parents had died long since; must not her father's parents be dead also? If they were still living, it was difficult to see why Strachinsky had not cast upon them the burden of her maintenance. Still, there were reasons why he should not have done so.

If her father's relatives were people of integrity and refinement, any business discussion or explanation with them would have been most distressing; no wonder that he avoided it, especially since Erika's maintenance cost him little or nothing.

Thus far she had arrived in her reflections, when Minna entered and asked her to go immediately to the drawing-room, where a visitor awaited her.

A visitor at Luzano? Such an event was unheard of.

In some distress Erika looked down at her shabby gown, made out of an old dressing-gown of her mother's, black, with a Turkish border. There was a hole in the elbow of the left sleeve.

"What sort of a gentleman is it, Minna?" she asked, irritably, suspecting him to be some business acquaintance of Strachinsky's.

"A foreign gentleman."

"Old or young?"

"An elderly gentleman."

"Well, if he is elderly, and has no lady with him," she murmured, "I can go just as I am." She knew from books, whence she derived all her worldly wisdom, that ladies were much more critical than gentlemen.

"What in the world can he want of me?"

She went up to the mirror, smoothed her hair, drew together with a black thread the hole in her sleeve, and hurried down to the drawing-room. The apartment to which this name was still given was on the ground-floor, as large as a riding-school, and almost as empty.

Besides the piano it still contained two huge bookcases, a shabby sofa behind a rickety table, and a round piano-stool. The rest of the furniture had disappeared. Some chairs had been banished as unsafe; the other things had been sold piece by piece, under stress of various pecuniary embarrassments, to the Jew broker of the village.

Strachinsky had several times attempted to dispose thus of the books also, but Solomon Bondy had no market for them. Once the Pole had tried to sell the piano. But Solomon had curtly refused to find a purchaser for it, knowing that with the piano the last remnant of enjoyment would be snatched from the poor lonely girl vegetating in the castle. The Jew had shown more mercy than the Christian. And then her dead mother had been dear to him, as she was to all around her.

She had been dear to Strachinsky also, but he never allowed his affection to stand in the way of his ease.

In consequence of the total lack of furniture, Strachinsky, when Erika entered the room, was sitting beside the stranger on the sofa,--which looked comical.

The stranger, a man of middle age, tall, broad-shouldered, and erect in bearing, rose to receive her.

"May I beg you to present me to the Countess?" he said, turning to Strachinsky.

"Countess!" It thrilled her. Had she heard aright?

"Herr Doctor Herbegg--my daughter," with a wave of the hand.

"Your step-daughter," the stranger corrected him, with cool emphasis.

"I have never made any difference between her and my own children, dead in their early youth," said the other; and he was right, for he had taken very little interest in his own children. "You know that, my child," he added, in a caressing tone that in his stepdaughter's ears was like an echo of his old love-making to his wife, and which offended her. He would have taken her hand, but she withdrew it hastily from his flabby warm touch.

Since there was no other scat to be had, she turned to the piano to get the piano-stool. Doctor Herbegg arose and took it from her.

Then Strachinsky started up with incredible activity, and a positive struggle for the stool ensued, a mutual "Pray, pray, Herr Baron--Herr Doctor!"

Erika calmly looked on at their strange behaviour. Had she suddenly become of such importance that each was striving to show her courtesy? Through her youthful soul the word 'Countess' echoed again with thrilling fascination.

Strachinsky finally gained the day: he placed the piano-stool for his step-daughter, panting as he did so, so unused was he to the slightest physical exertion.

Erika seated herself upon the stool, although each gentleman offered her a place on the sofa, assumed a dignified air, or what she supposed to be such, and calmly surveyed the situation and the stranger. Something told her that his visit was an important event for her and hinted at a turning-point in her life. She was not mistaken. Doctor Herbegg was her grandmother's legal adviser.

He began to converse upon indifferent topics, watching her narrowly the while.

Her step-father, who had become utterly unaccustomed to the reception of guests, wriggled about on the sofa as if stung by a tarantula. He had always been restless in his demeanour when he was not awkwardly stiff, but formerly his good looks had compensated for his defective training. They no longer existed: the self-indulgent indolence to which he had given himself over, so soon as all social contact with the world was at an end for him, had done its part in effecting their decay.

"A bottle of wine! Bring a bottle of wine!" he ordered the young girl, forgetting the suavity of speech he had just before adopted, and falling into his usual tone.

"Pray do not trouble the Countess on my account," Doctor Herbegg interposed. "I can take nothing. My time is limited, since I must catch the next train for Berlin."

"Surely, Herr Doctor, you will take a glass of Tokay," Strachinsky persisted, and, perceiving that his manner of addressing his step-daughter had offended the lawyer, he was amiable enough to add, "Do not trouble yourself, my dear Rika; I will attend to it." He arose, and as he was leaving the room he went on, "The Herr Doctor will inform you, meanwhile, as to the change in your prospects."

The lawyer made no attempt to detain him. He cared very little about the glass of Tokay, but very much about an interview with the young girl. When Strachinsky had left the room he approached Erika, and in a short time had explained matters to her.

The title of Countess, which her mother had concealed from her, apparently because in the circumstances in which she was forced to educate her child it would have been more of a hinderance than a help, was hers of right. Her mother's first marriage had been with the only son by a second marriage of Count Lenzdorff: he had held office under the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and two years after his marriage had been killed in a railroad accident. By her second marriage Frau von Strachinsky had alienated her mother-in-law. Meanwhile, the two sons of Count Lenzdorff's first marriage had died, childless, and finally the Count himself had died, at a very advanced age,--so old that he had persuaded himself that he had outlived death, and had therefore never taken the trouble to make a will; consequently his entire estate devolved upon his grand-daughter.

The lawyer had just imparted this intelligence to the grand-daughter in question, when Strachinsky re-entered the room, very much out of breath and excited, and followed by Minna, tall, gaunt, with the bearing of a grenadier and the gloomy air of an energetic old maid whom it behooves to be upon the defensive with the entire male sex. She carried a waiter, which she placed upon the table before the sofa.

"One little glass, Herr Doctor,--one little glass!" cried Strachinsky.

The Doctor bowed his thanks, and touched the glass distrustfully with his lips.

"The Tokay is excellent," he remarked, in evident surprise at finding anything of Strachinsky's genuine.

"Yes, yes," his host declared; "you can't get such a glass of wine as that everywhere, Herr Doctor. I purchased it in Hungary by favour of an intimate friend, Prince Liskat,--les restes des grandeurs passées, my dear Doctor."

After a first glass Strachinsky became tenderly condescending: he patted the lawyer on the shoulder. "Pray don't hurry, my dear Herbegg; you'll not easily find another glass of such Tokay."

Erika observed that Doctor Herbegg bit his lip and did not touch his second glass. He looked at his watch and said, "Unfortunately, Countess, I have but little time left, but I should like to inform myself upon several points, in accordance with your grandmother's wish. Where and with whom have you been educated?"

"At home, and with my mother."

"Exclusively with your mother?"

"Yes; she even gave me lessons in French and upon the piano."

She was burning to rehabilitate her mother in his eyes.

"My wife was an admirable performer, an artist, a pupil of Liszt's," Strachinsky interposed.--"Play something to the Doctor; be quick!" he ordered, grandiloquently, dropping again his rôle of tender parent. His imperious tone provoked Erika unutterably: she would have liked to rush from the room and fling to the door behind her, but she conquered herself for her mother's sake and--out of vanity.

She opened the piano, and played the last portion of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata,--the last thing that she had studied with her mother. Her execution was still rude and unequal, like that of an ardent youthful creature whose musical aspirations have never been toned down by culture, but an unusual amount of talent was evident in her performance.

"Magnificent, Countess!" exclaimed the lawyer, rising and going towards her as she left the piano.

"Very well; but you missed that last chord once," Strachinsky said, pompously.

Doctor Herbegg paid him not the least attention. "Now I am forced to go," he said to the young girl; "and you must not smile, Countess, if I tell you that I leave you with a much lighter heart than the one I brought with me. Your grandmother sent me here to reconnoitre, as it were: I find a gifted young lady, where I had feared to encounter an untrained village girl."

Then suddenly Erika's overstrained nerves gave way. "My grandmother had no right to allow of such a fear on your part; no one who had ever known my mother could have supposed anything of the kind."

He looked her full in the face more steadily, more searchingly than before, and his cold, clear eyes suddenly shone with a genial light. "Forgive me," he said, kissing the hand she held out to him; then, turning, he would have left the room with a brief bow to Strachinsky.

His host, however, made haste to disburden himself of a fine speech. "You will have something to tell in Berlin, will you not? You have at least seen how a Bohemian gentleman lives. No lounging-chairs in the drawing-room, but Tokay in the cellar. Original, at all events, eh?"

"Extremely original," the lawyer assented.

On the threshold he paused. "One question more, Herr Baron," he began, bending upon his condescending host a look of keenest scrutiny. "Did the late Frau von Strachinsky leave no written document by which she provided for her daughter's future?"

Strachinsky listened to this question with a scarcely perceptible degree of embarrassment. "Not that I know of," he said, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.

Erika suddenly remembered that her mother had been busily engaged in writing a few days before her death.

Meanwhile, her step-father, having gained entire control of his features, continued, "Moreover, in this case any testamentary document would have been entirely superfluous. My wife knew well that should she die I should care for her daughter as for my own."

"H'm!" the Doctor ejaculated. "And did Frau von Strachinsky never speak to you of her Berlin relatives, Countess?"

"No," Erika replied, thoughtfully. "She was very restless for some weeks before her death, and often told me that as soon as we were quite sure of being uninterrupted she had an important communication to make to me. But she never did so: death closed her lips."

The Doctor reflected for a moment, and then said, "I am rather surprised, Herr von Strachinsky, that you did not advise old Countess Lenzdorff of your wife's death."

Strachinsky assumed an injured air. "Permit me to ask you, Herr Doctor," he said, with lofty emphasis, "why I should have informed Countess Lenzdorff of my adored wife's death? Countess Lenzdorff was my bitterest enemy. She opposed my wife's union with me not only openly, but with all sorts of underhand schemes, and when she could not succeed in severing the tie that united our hearts, she dismissed my wife and her daughter without one friendly word of farewell. Since she entirely ignored my wife while she lived, how was I to suppose that she would take any interest in the death of my idolized Emma?"

"But the announcement of her death would have seriously influenced your step-daughter's destiny," Doctor Herbegg observed.

"My wife considered me the guardian of her child," Strachinsky declared, with pathos. "Another man might have refused to accept a burden entailing upon him sacrifice of every kind. But I am not like other men. My wife evidently supposed that her child would be best cared for under my protection; and I was not the man to betray her confidence. You look surprised, Doctor. Yes, no doubt you think it strange for a man nowadays to vindicate his chivalry and disinterestedness, to his own ruin. But such a man am I,--a Marquis Posa, a Don Quixote, an Egmont----"

"Pardon me, Herr Baron, I shall be late for the train," said the Doctor, and, with a bow to Erika, he left the room.

Strachinsky ran after him with astonishing celerity, expatiating upon his chivalrous disinterestedness. Shortly afterwards a carriage was heard driving out of the courtyard; and Strachinsky returned to the bare drawing-room, which his step-daughter had not yet left.

His face beamed with satisfaction; rubbing his hands, he cried out, "Now we shall lack for nothing!" Then, turning to Erika, he continued, "I shall see to it that your German relatives do not squander your property. This lawyer-fellow seems to me a schemer, a sly dog. But I shall do my best to watch over your interests. In fact, it is my duty as your guardian to administer your affairs. Moreover, in three years you will be of age, and then we can avail ourselves of your money to free Luzano from its weight of debt."

This delightful scheme made him extremely cheerful. After pacing the apartment for a while, lost in contemplation of its feasibility, he went to the table, and, taking up the Doctor's untouched second glass of Tokay, he poured its contents back into the bottle. This he called economy. Then with the bottle in his hand, apparently with a view of re-sealing it, he went towards the door, saying, "The affair has greatly agitated me. I am so very sensitive. But when one has had to wait upon fortune so long---!"

He had settled it with himself that he was the person principally interested; his step-daughter was quite a secondary consideration, at most the means to an end. But circumstances shaped themselves after what was to him a most unexpected and undesirable fashion. Erika received a brief and rather formal letter from Countess Lenzdorff, in which the old lady requested her to repair as soon as possible to Berlin, but upon no account to allow Strachinsky to accompany her; in short, the old Countess refused to have any personal intercourse with him whatever.

By the same post came a letter from Doctor Herbegg to Strachinsky, formally advising him to resign his guardianship voluntarily. Should he comply, the Countess would refrain from closer examination of his administration of the property of her daughter-in-law and of her grandchild. But if, on the other hand, he made the slightest attempt to interfere in the management of his step-daughter's German estate, she would, as the guardian appointed by the late Count, resort to legal means for relieving herself of such interference.

Had Strachinsky's conscience been perfectly clear he would probably have set himself in opposition, but as it was he contented himself with gnashing his teeth and raging for two days, indulging freely in vituperation of old Countess Lenzdorff. Then he made a final tender attempt to work upon Erika's feelings and to induce her to espouse his cause with her grandmother. When this failed, he wrapped himself in his martyr's cloak and submitted with much grumbling. Dulled as his nature was, he bore his disappointment with comparative ease. At first he assumed an air of magnanimous renunciation towards his step-daughter, but after a while he overwhelmed her with good advice, and groaned for her whenever she lifted any weight or stooped in her packing. Erika herself, meanwhile, was in a state of tremendous excitement.

On the morning of her departure, when her trunks were all packed she took a walk. She first visited her mother's grave for the last time, and then went into the garden, pausing in all her favourite haunts, and avoiding with a shudder even a glance towards the spot by the low garden wall whence she had seen her mother hurrying across the fields towards the river.

Still, in whatever direction she turned she felt the presence of the stream: she heard its voice loud and wailing as it rushed along swollen by the winter's snows. A soft breeze swept above the earth, mingling its sighs with the graver note of the water. Everything trembled and quivered; every tree, every sprouting plant, throbbed; all nature thrilled with delicious pain,--the fever of the spring. And on a sudden she felt herself carried away by a like thrill of excitement; a nameless yearning, ignorant of aim, possessed her, transporting her to the skies, and yet binding her to the earth in the fetters of a languor such as she had never before experienced.

Once more there arose in her memory the figure of the young artist who had drawn her picture there beside the brook as it rippled dreamily on its way to the river. She saw him distinctly before her: her heart began to throb wildly.

She hurried on to the spot where he had sketched her. The swollen brook murmured far more loudly over the pebbles than it had done on that hot day in midsummer; the reddish boughs of the willows began to show silver-gray buds, and on the bank there gleamed something blue,--the first forget-me-nots. She stooped to pluck them.

At that moment she heard Minna's voice calling, "Rika! where are you?"

She started, and, tripping upon the wet slippery soil, all but fell into the brook. With difficulty she regained her footing, and without her flowers; they grew too far below her. She looked at them longingly and went her way.

When she reached the house she found the carriage already in the court-yard,--a huge, green, glass coach, that clattered and jingled at the slightest movement. It was lined with dark-brown striped awning-stuff,--the shabbiest vehicle that ever ran upon four wheels.

Beside the carriage stood a clumsy cart, in which the luggage was to be piled. Herr von Strachinsky was ordering about the servants carrying the trunks. Everything in the house was topsy-turvy. Breakfast had been hurriedly prepared, and was waiting--a most uninviting repast--upon the dining-room table. Erika could not eat. She ran to her room and put on her bonnet.

"Hurry, hurry!" Minna called up from below.

She ran down and crossed the threshold. The air was warm and damp, and a fine rain was falling. Strachinsky helped her into the carriage with pompous formality. "I shall not accompany you to the station," he said. "I do not like driving in a close carriage. Adieu!" He had nothing more affectionate to say to her, as he shook her hand. The carriage door clattered to; the horses started. Thus Erika rattled out of the court-yard, with Minna beside her. The servant looked tired out; her face was very red, and she had a hand-bag in her lap, and a bandbox and two bundles of shawls on the seat opposite her. The carriage was very stuffy, and smelled of old leather. Erika opened one of the windows. They were driving along the same road by which she had followed her mother's coffin; there beyond the meadow she could see the wall of the church-yard. She leaned far out of the window. The driver whipped up his horses; the church-yard vanished. The young girl suddenly felt as if the very heart were being torn from her breast, and she burst into tears, sobbing convulsively, uncontrollably.

CHAPTER IV.

On the evening of the same day an old lady was walking to and fro in a large, tastefully-furnished apartment looking out upon a little front garden in Bellevue Street, Berlin. Both furniture and hangings in the room, in contrast with the prevailing fashion, were light and cheerful. The old lady's forehead wore a slight frown, and her air was somewhat impatient, as of one awaiting a verdict.

At the first glance it was plain that she was very old, very tall, broad-shouldered, and straight as a fir. In her bearing there was the personal dignity of one whose pride has never had to bow, who has never paid society the tribute of the slightest hypocrisy, who has never had to lower a glance before mankind or before a memory; but it was at the same time characterized by the unconscious selfishness, disguised as love of independence, of one who has never allowed aught to interfere with personal ease. Upon the broad shoulders, so well fitted to support with dignity and power the convictions of a lifetime, was set a head of remarkable beauty,--the head, noble in every line, of an old woman who has never made the slightest attempt to appear one day younger than her age. Oddly enough, there looked forth from the face--the face of an antique statue--a pair of large, modern eyes, philosophic eyes, whose glance could penetrate to the secret core of a human soul,--eyes which nothing escaped, in the sight of which there were few things sacred, and nothing inexcusable, because they perceived human nature as it is, without requiring from it the impossible.

Such was Erika's grandmother, Countess Anna Lenzdorff.

After she had paced the room to and fro for a long time, she seated herself, with a short impatient sigh, in an arm-chair that stood invitingly beside a table covered with books and provided with a student-lamp. She took up a volume of Maupassant, but a degree of mental restlessness to which she was entirely unaccustomed tormented her, and she laid the book aside. Her bright eyes wandered from one object to another in the room, and were finally arrested by a large picture hanging on the opposite wall.

It represented an opening in a leafy forest, dewy fresh, and saturated with depth of sunshine. In the midst of the golden glow was a strange group,--two nymphs sporting with a shaggy brown faun. The picture was by Böcklin, and the forest, the faun, and the white limbs of the nymphs were painted with incomparable skill: nevertheless the picture could not be pronounced free from the reproach of a certain meretriciousness.

It had never occurred to Countess Lenzdorff to ponder upon the picture; she had bought it because she thought it beautiful, and certainly an old woman has a right to hang anything that she chooses upon her walls, so long as it is a work of art. To-night she suddenly began to attach all sorts of considerations to the picture.

Meanwhile, an old footman, with a duly-shaven upper lip, and very bushy whiskers, entered and announced, "Herr von Sydow."

"I am very glad," the old lady rejoined, evidently quite rejoiced, whereupon there entered a very tall, almost gigantic officer of dragoons, with short fair hair and a grave handsome face.

"You come just at the right time, Goswyn," she said, cordially, extending her delicate old hand. He touched it with his lips, and then, in obedience to her gesture, took a seat near her, within the circle of light of the lamp.

"How can I serve you, Countess?" he asked.

"You are acquainted with my small gallery," she began, looking around the large airy room with some pride.

"I have frequently enjoyed your works of art," the young officer replied. The phrase was rather formal; in fact, he himself was rather formal, but there was something so genial behind his stiff North-German formality that one easily forgave him his purely superficial priggishness,--nay, upon further acquaintance came to like it.

"Rather antiquated in expression, your reply," the old lady rejoined. "My small collection thanks you for your kindly appreciation; but that is not the question at present. You know my Böcklin?"

"Yes, Countess."

"What do you think of it?"

He fixed his eyes upon it. "What could I think of it? It is a masterpiece."

"H'm! that all the world admits," the old lady murmured, impatiently, as if vexed at the want of originality in his remark; "but is it a picture that one would leave hanging on the wall of one's boudoir when one was about to receive into one's house as an inmate a grand-daughter of sixteen? Give me your opinion as to that, Goswyn."

Again Goswyn von Sydow fixed his eyes upon the picture. "That would depend very much upon the kind of grand-daughter," he said, frowning slightly. "If she were a young girl brought up in the world and accustomed from childhood to works of art, I should say yes. If she were a young girl educated in a convent or bred in the country, I should say no."

The old lady sighed. "I knew it!" she said. "My Böcklin is doomed. Ah!" she exclaimed, wringing her hands in mock despair. "Pray, Goswyn,"--she treated the young officer with the affectionate familiarity an old lady would use towards a young fellow whom she has known intimately from early childhood,--"press that button beside you."

The dragoon, evidently perfectly at home in the house, stretched out a very long arm and pressed the button.

The footman immediately appeared. "Lüdecke, call Friedrich to help you take down that picture."

"Friedrich has gone to the station, your Excellency," Lüdecke permitted himself to remark.

"Yes, of course everything is topsy-turvy; nothing is as it has been used to be. 'Coming events cast their shadows before.' It will always be so now," sighed the Countess.

"I will help you take down the picture, Lüdecke," Herr von Sydow said, quietly, and before the Countess could look around there was nothing save a broad expanse of light cretonne and two hooks upon the wall where the Böcklin had hung.

Lüdecke's strength sufficed to carry the picture from the room.

"Bring in tea," the Countess called after him. "You will take a cup of tea with me, Goswyn?"

"Are you not going to wait for the young Countess?" Sydow asked, rather timidly.

"Oh, she will not be here before midnight. I don't know why Friedrich has gone at this hour to the station; probably he is in love with the young person at the railway restaurant; else I cannot understand his hurry. However, I thank you for your admonition."

"But, my dear Countess----" exclaimed the young man.

"No need to excuse yourself," she cut short what he was about to say. "I am not displeased: you have never displeased me, except by not having arranged matters so as to come into the world as my son. Moreover, I should seriously regret the loss of your good opinion. Pray forgive me for not driving myself to the railway station to meet my grand-daughter and to edify the officials with a touching and effective scene. Consider, this is my last comfortable evening."

"Your last comfortable evening," Goswyn von Sydow repeated, thoughtfully.

"Now you disapprove of me again," the old Countess complained, ironically.

"Disapprove!" he repeated, with an ineffective attempt to laugh at the word. "Really, Countess, if I did not know how kind-hearted you are, I should be sorry for your grand-daughter."

Ho cleared his throat several times as he spoke; he always became a little hoarse when speaking directly from his heart.

"Kind-hearted,--kind-hearted," the old lady murmured, provoked; "pray don't put me off with compliments. What sort of word is 'kind-hearted'? One has weak nerves just as one has an aching tooth, and one does all that one can to spare them; all the little woes one perceives one relieves, if possible,--of course it is very disagreeable not to relieve them,--but the intense misery with which the world is filled one simply forgets, and is none the worse for so doing. You know it is not my fashion to deceive myself as to the beauty of my own character. You are sorry for my grand-daughter."

He would have assured her that he spoke conditionally, but she would not allow him to do so. "Yes, you are sorry for my grand-daughter," she said, decidedly, "but are you not at all sorry for me?"

"Upon that point you must allow me to express myself when I have made acquaintance with the young Countess."

"That has very little to do with it," rejoined the old lady. "Let us take it for granted that she is charming. Doctor Herbegg says she is a jewel of the purest water, lacking nothing but a little polish; between ourselves, I do not altogether believe him. He exaggerated my grand-daughter's attractions a little to make it easy for me to receive her. He is a good man, but, like two-thirds of the men who are worth anything,"--with a significant side-glance at Sydow,--"a little of a prig. But let us take for granted that my grand-daughter is the phœnix he describes, it is none the less true that on her account I must, in my old age, alter my comfortable mode of life, and subject myself to the thousand petty annoyances which the presence of a young girl in my house is sure to bring with it. Do you know how I felt when my indispensable old donkey"--the Countess Lenzdorff was wont frequently to designate thus her old footman Lüdecke--"carried out my Böcklin?" She fixed her eyes sadly upon the bare place on the wall. "I felt as if he were dragging out with it all the comforts of my daily life! Ah, here is the tea."

"It has been here for some time," Sydow said, smiling. "I was just about to call your attention to the kettle, which is boiling over."

She made the tea with extreme precision. It was delightful to see the beautiful old lady presiding over the old-fashioned silver tray with its contents. She wore on this evening a white tulle cap tied beneath the chin, and over it an exquisite little black lace scarf. A refined Epicurean nature revealed itself in her every movement,--in the delicate grace with which she handled the transparent teacups and measured the tea from its dainty caddy,--in the gusto with which she inhaled the aroma of this very choice brand of tea.

"There!" she said, handing the young officer a cup, "you may not agree with my views of life, but you must praise my tea, which is in fact much too good for you, who follow the vile German custom of spoiling it with sugar."

She herself had put in the sugar for him, taking care to give him just as much as he liked; she handed him a plate, and offered him the delicate wafers which she knew he preferred. She was excessively kind to him, and he valued her; he was cordially attached to her; she had been his mother's oldest friend; she had spoiled him from boyhood, and had, as she said, "thought the world of him." This could not but please any man. He appreciated so highly her kindness and thoughtfulness that until to-night the selfishness of which she boasted, and by which she had laid down the rules of her life, had seemed to him little more than amusing eccentricity. But to-night her attitude towards her grandchild grieved him. Not that he regarded this grandchild from a romantic point of view. He was no unpractical dreamer, nor even what is usually called an idealist, which means in German nothing except a muddled brain that deems it quite improper to hold clear views upon any subject or to look any reality boldly in the face. On the contrary, he had a very calm and sensible way of regarding matters. Consequently he thought it probable that the poor, neglected young girl, left for three years to the care of a boorish step-father, awkward and tactless as she must be under the circumstances, would be anything but a suitable addition to the household of the Countess Lenzdorff; but, good heavens! the girl was the old lady's flesh and blood, a poor thing who had lost her mother three years previously and had had no one to speak a kind word to her since. If the poor creature were ill-bred and neglected, whose fault was it, in fact? It passed his power of comprehension that the old lady should feel nothing save the inconvenience and annoyance of the situation, that she should be stirred by no emotion of pity.

Perhaps she guessed his thoughts,--she was skilled in divining the thoughts of others,--but she cared nothing about shocking people; on the contrary, she rather liked to do so.

When he picked up one of the books on her table she said, "None of your namby-pamby literature, Goswyn, but a bright, witty book. Tell me, do you think that in my grand-daughter's honour I ought to lock up all my entertaining books and subscribe to the 'Children's Friend'?"

"Let us take for granted that your grand-daughter has not contracted the habit of dipping into every book she sees lying about," Goswyn observed.

"Let us hope so," she said, with a laugh; "but who knows? For three years she has been without any one to look after her, and probably she has already devoured her precious step-father's entire library."

"Oh, Countess!"

"What would you have? Such cases do occur. Look at your sister-in-law Dorothea: she told me, with an air of great satisfaction, that before her marriage she had read all Belot."

"She avowed the same thing to me just after she came home from her wedding journey, and she seemed to think it very clever," replied Goswyn, slowly.

"H'm! the wicked fairy always asserts that you were in love with your sister-in-law," the old lady said, archly menacing him with her forefinger.

"Indeed? I should like to know upon what my aunt Brock founds her assertion," the young man rejoined, coldly.

"Why, upon the intense dislike you always parade for your pretty sister-in-law," the Countess said, with a laugh.

"I do not parade it at all."

"But you feel it."

Goswyn von Sydow had risen from his chair. "It is very late," he said, picking up his cap.

"I have not driven you away with my poor jests?" the old lady inquired, as she also rose.

"No," he replied,--"at least not for long: if you will permit me, my dear Countess, I will call upon you in the autumn."

"And until then----?"

"I shall not have that pleasure, unfortunately; I leave with the General to-morrow for Kiel, and came to-night only to bid you good-bye. When I return I shall hardly find you still in Berlin."

"Indeed? I am sorry," she replied, "first because I really like to see you from time to time, although you entertain antiquated views of life and always disapprove of me, and secondly because I had hoped you would help me a little in my grand-daughter's education. Of course if she has already perused all Belot----"

"It would suit you precisely, Countess," he said, rallying her, "for then you could--h'm--hang up your Böcklin in its old place."

"What an idea!" cried the Countess. "But you are quite mistaken: I should be furious if my grand-daughter should be found to have read all Belot's works."

"Indeed?"

"Of course; because then there would be absolutely no hope of your taking the child off my hands."

He frowned.

"Do you understand me?" the old lady asked, gaily.

"Partly."

"Unfortunately, you seem to have very little desire for matrimony."

"I confess that for the present it is but faint."

"Let us hope that this mysterious Erika will be charming enough to----"

Suddenly she turned her head: a carriage was rolling along Bellevue Street, already deserted at this hour because of the lateness of the season. It stopped before the house. The old lady started, grew visibly paler, and compressed her lips.

The hall door opened; the servants ran down the staircase.

"Good night, Countess!" Goswyn touched the delicate old hand with his lips and hurried away.

On the staircase he encountered a tall slender girl in the most unbecoming mourning attire that he had ever seen a human being wear, and with gloves so much too short that they revealed a pair of slightly-reddened wrists. He touched his cap, and bowed profoundly.

He carried into the street with him an impression in his heart of something pale, slender, immature, pathetic, concealing the germ of great beauty.

He could not forget the distress in the eyes that had looked out from the pale oval face. He recalled the coldly-sneering old woman in the room he had left, with her disdain of all emotion. He knew how she would be repelled by the red wrists and the disfiguring gown. "Poor thing!" he said to himself.

In thoughtful mood he walked along a path in the Thiergarten. All around reigned silence. The sweet vigour of the spring-time was wafted from the soil, from the trees, from every tender soft unfolding leaf. In the gentle light of countless sparkling stars the feathery young foliage gleamed with a ghostly pallor; here and there a lantern shone, a spot of yellow light in the dimness, colouring the grass and leaves about it arsenic-green.

No people were here who had anything to do; only here and there a pair of lovers were strolling in the warm shade of the spring night.

The insistent rhythm of some popular dance interrupted the yearning music of spring which was sighing through the half-open leaves and blossoms. The noise annoyed him, reminding him unpleasantly of the cynicism with which unsuccessful men are wont to vaunt the bitterness of their existence.

He had walked far out of his way, into the midst of the Thiergarten.

More lovers; another pair,--and still another.

Except for them the place was deserted, silent: above were the glimmering stars, and on the earth below them the tall trees full of life, striving upward to the light; everywhere breathed the fragrance of fresh young growth, mingled with the aroma of last year's decaying leaves; the thrill of life around, with the echo in the distance of the vulgar dance-music.

He could not have told how or why it was, but Sydow was more than ever conscious to-night of the discord sounding through creation, vainly seeking, as it has done for centuries, for its solution.

And in the midst of his discontent there arose within him the memory of the haunting distress in the young girl's large eyes, and he was filled with warm, eager compassion for the poor, forlorn creature for whom there was no one to care. He would have liked to take the child in his arms and soothe her distress as one would have petted a bird fallen from the nest, or a truant, beaten dog.

CHAPTER V.

The Countess Lenzdorff had gone to meet her granddaughter as far as the vestibule, which was hung with Japanese crape and lighted by red Venetian lanterns in wrought-iron frames.

She had been convinced from the first that the brilliant description which Doctor Herbegg had given of her grand-daughter was not to be trusted, and she had consequently moderated her expectations, but yet she was startled at what she encountered in the vestibule, the door of which the ever-ready Lüdecke had left open. At first she thought that the tall spare girl in that gown was her grand-daughter's attendant; but since behind the awkward creature whose clothes were all awry stalked a broad-shouldered female grenadier with a woollen kerchief on her head and a pasteboard bandbox in her hand, she doubted no longer which was her grand-daughter: it was not necessary for Doctor Herbegg to present the girl to her with, "Here is the young Countess, your Excellency."

She advanced a step and touched the girl's forehead with her lips.

"Welcome to Berlin, dear child," she said, coldly. This, then, was her grand-daughter,--this angular creature with red wrists and a servant who wore a woollen kerchief on her head and carried in her hand an archaic pasteboard bandbox. The Countess shuddered. "Will you have a cup of tea, my dear Doctor?" she said, turning to her lawyer with the hope of putting a little life into the situation. Then, seeing him look at her with something of the dismay in his expression which Goswyn von Sydow's features had shown when she had complained that this was to be her last comfortable evening, she added, hastily, "You will not? Well, you are right; it is late; another time, my dear Herbegg, you will do me the pleasure; and I--I could hardly remain with you; I am too--too desirous of making acquaintance with my grand-daughter."

The last words came with something of a stumble, as if the Countess had been obliged to give them a push before they would leave her lips.

The Doctor took a ceremonious leave. Minna, with her bandbox, which she refused to allow any one to take from her, was conducted by a footman to the servants' hall, the Countess Lenzdorff having informed her that her own maid would attend for this evening to her young mistress's wants. Erika followed her grandmother through several brilliantly-lighted apartments, the arrangement of which produced upon her the impression of a fairy-tale, to an airy little room adjoining the old Countess's sleeping-apartment.

"This is your room," said Countess Lenzdorff. "I had your bed put for the present in my dressing-room; it is the best arrangement, and--and I--I think I would rather have you close at hand. Of course it is all provisionary: I do not even know yet what is to be done with you, whether--whether you will stay with me, or go for a while to some school. At any rate, for the present you must try to feel comfortable with me."

Comfortable! It was asking much of the girl that she should feel comfortable under the circumstances! She wanted to say something: it annoyed her to have to play the part of a dunce,--her poor, youthful pride rebelled against it,--but she said not a word; she had to summon up all her resolution to keep back the tears that would well up to her eyes. With the slow stony gaze of one who is determined not to cry, she looked about her upon her new surroundings.

How airy and fragrant, how bright and fresh and inviting, it all was! But in the midst of this Paradise she stood, trembling with fatigue, sore in soul and body, timid and sad, with but one wish,--that she might creep away somewhere into the dark.

â?¢ Her grandmother perceived something of the girl's suffering, but still could not overcome her own distaste. "Will you dress first, or have some supper immediately?" she asked, with an evident effort to be kind. As she spoke, her bright eyes scanned the girl from head to foot. Poor Erika! She understood only too clearly that her grandmother was disappointed in her, that personally she was in no respect what the old lady had hoped for.

"I should like to brush off some of this dust," she stammered, meekly. Her voice was remarkably soft and sweet, and her accent brought a reminiscence of the Austrian intonation, so much admired in Berlin.

For the first time the Countess's heart was moved in favour of the young creature; some chord within her vibrated agreeably. "Well, my child, do just as you like," she said, rather more warmly, as she made an attempt to unfasten the top button of the ugly black garment that so disfigured her grand-daughter. With a shy gesture Erika raised her hands and held her poor gown together over her breast. There was something in the gesture that touched the old lady. "You may go," she said to the maid, who had meanwhile been unpacking Erika's travelling-bag. "I will ring for you when we want you." Then, turning to Erika, she added, "I will help you myself to undress."

Erika's sensations can hardly be described. Apart from the fact that in consequence of her intense shyness, the shyness of a very strong, pure nature bred in solitude, it was terrible to her even to take off her gown in the presence of a stranger, it suddenly seemed very hard to her (she had not thought of it at first) to expose to her grandmother's penetrating gaze the poverty of her wardrobe. She trembled from head to foot as her grandmother drew down her gown from her shoulders. But, strange to say, it almost seemed as if with the ugly dress some sort of barrier of separation between herself and her grandmother were removed. The old lady's bright eyes were dimmed by a certain emotion as she noticed the coarse, ill-made, but daintily white linen shift that left bare a small portion of the young, half-developed shoulders. "Poor thing!" she murmured, the words coming for the first time warm from her heart. Then, stroking the girl's long, slender, nobly-modelled arm, she said, "How fair you are! I only begin now to see what you look like." She lifted the heavy knot of shining hair from the back of Erika's neck, and, in an access of that absence of mind for which she was noted in the Berlin world of society, exclaimed, "Mais elle est magnifique!--In three years she will be a beauty!--Turn your head a little to the left."

Her grand-daughter's stare of dismay recalled her. "What would Goswyn say if he heard me?" she thought, and smiled.

Erika had only bathed her face and hands, and slipped on a long white dressing-gown of her grandmother's, when the maid brought in a waiter with her supper. In spite of her continued sense of discomfort, youth demanded its rights. She was decidedly hungry, and it was long since she had seen anything so inviting as this dainty repast. She sat down and began to eat.

The old Countess observed her narrowly, but saw nothing to displease her. Her grandchild's manner of eating and drinking, of holding her fork, her glass of water,--all was just as it should be.

The whole thing seemed odd to the Countess Lenzdorff: she delighted in everything odd.

Not to disturb the girl at her repast, she looked away from her, glancing at the contents of the shabby old travelling-bag which the maid had unpacked. How poverty-stricken it all looked, in almost ridiculous--no, in positively pathetic--contrast with the young creature who in spite of her awkwardness had a regal air. "Mais elle est superbe! Where were my eyes?" the Countess thought, as she casually picked up a book from among Erika's belongings. It was a volume of Plutarch. "'Tis comical enough," she thought, "if I am to have a little blue-stocking in the house."

As she turned over the leaves rather absently, she noticed that passages here and there were encircled by thick pencil-marks: sometimes an entire page would be thus marked, sometimes only a few lines.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"My mother always used to mark so in my books the parts that I must not read," Erika said, simply.

The Countess's eyes flashed. How sure a way to lead a child to taste the forbidden fruit!--or was it possible that girls growing up in the country under the exclusive influence of a mother might be differently constituted from girls in cities and boarding-schools?

"And you really did not read those portions?" she asked, half smiling.

The girl's face grew dark. "How could I?" she exclaimed, almost angrily.

"Brava!" cried her grandmother, patting her grandchild's shoulder. "You are an honourable little lady,--a very great rarity. We shall get along very well together."

But, far from the girl's expressing any pleasure at this frank recognition of her excellence, her face did not relax one whit.

Erika had gone to bed. Countess Lenzdorff was still up and pacing her chamber to and fro. She thoroughly understood the full significance of her granddaughter's being with her; she was neither heartless nor complaining, but, where emotion was concerned, a sensitive old woman who studiously avoided everything that could agitate her nerves. But at present she could not control her emotion; feeling awoke within her as from a long sleep. At first she was conscious only of a vague discomfort,--a strange sensation which she ascribed to nervousness that must be controlled; but, far from being controlled, it increased, growing stronger until it became a positive hunger of the heart.

The self-dissatisfaction which had begun to torment her when she learned that Erika after her mother's death had been entirely uncared for, left alone with her step-father, now increased tenfold. It was the fault of the Pole, who had not notified her of his wife's death. But this excuse did not content her. How could she blame him? What had he done save follow her example in caring only for his own personal ease?

The unkindness with which she had treated her daughter-in-law now troubled her more than her loveless neglect of her grandchild. Had she any right to despise and cast her off because of her weakness? Good heavens! she was a rare creature in spite of everything; she had shown herself so in her child's education. What an influence she must have exercised over the girl to preserve her from deterioration through those terrible three years. Poor Emma! The old Countess's heart grew heavy as she recalled her. Her injustice to the poor woman dated from years back. She could not deny it.

She had never been fond of her daughter-in-law: each differed too fundamentally from the other. On the one hand was Anna Lenzdorff, with her keenly observant mind, self-interested even in her strict morality which in her arrogance she regarded as the necessity of her nature for moral purity and independence, something for which she claimed no merit, since she practised it solely for her private satisfaction; good-natured, but without enthusiasm, endlessly but lovelessly indulgent to humanity, and rather of opinion that life is nothing but a farce with a tragic conclusion, something out of which the most advantage may be gained by observing it from a safe, comfortable corner, without ever making an attempt to mingle in its activities, firmly convinced that the best conduct of life consists in acknowledging its glaring contradictions, its lack of harmony, in making use of palliatives where they are of use, and in postponing for as long as possible the facing of the huge deficit sure to appear at the close of every human existence. And on the other hand was Emma,--Emma, who had a positive horror of the philosophy of life, which her mother-in-law with easy indifference denominated "my laughing despair,"--Emma, who believed in everything, in God and in humanity,--yes, even, as her mother-in-law maintained, in the cure of leprosy and the disinterestedness of English politics,--Emma, for whom an existence in which she could take no active part was devoid of interest, and who looked upon a loveless life as worse than death,--Emma, whose unselfishness bordered upon fanaticism, blinding her conscience for a moment now and then, when she would have given to one person what she had no right to take from others,--Emma, utterly unable to appreciate proportion and moderation, and who, scorning all the palliatives and make shifts with which one eases existence, demanded from life absolute happiness, and consequently, dazzled by an illusion, plunged blindly into an abyss.

Ah, if it had been only an abyss! but no, it was a slough, and Anna Lenzdorff could not traverse it.

It certainly was strange that she, who found an excuse for every criminal of whom she read in the papers, had never been able to forgive her daughter-in-law when, thanks to her inborn thirst for the romantic, she forgot herself so far as to adore that Polish nonentity. What in the world could a woman of sense find in romance?

When Anna von Rhödern, at twenty-two, had married Count Ernst Lenzdorff, her views of life were in great measure the same that she had since elaborated so perfectly. She was of Courland descent, and the daughter of a prominent diplomat in the Russian service. Unlike her daughter-in-law, she had been a courted beauty, but at two-and-twenty she had turned her back upon all the sentimental possibilities to which in virtue of her great charm she had a right, and had married Count Lenzdorff, whose entire part in her existence she afterwards summed up in declaring that he really had bored her very little. And that, she maintained, was a great deal in a husband.

She had become acquainted with him in Paris, where he was secretary to the Prussian legation, and she married him there; afterwards he took up his abode in Berlin, where he held a distinguished position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In moments of insolent frankness she was wont to describe him as an automaton whose key was in the possession of whoever might be Minister of Foreign Affairs. Once wound up, he could perform all the duties of his office during the few hours in which they were required of him; when they were over he was a lifeless wooden figure-head--nothing more. A wooden figure-head whom one is obliged to drag after one in life conduces but little to one's comfort, especially when the wooden figure-head is of the dimensions of Count Ernst Lenzdorff, and of this his wife shortly became aware. With great courtesy and skill she removed him from her life as soon as possible, placing him somewhere in the background upon a suitable pedestal,--the best place for wooden figureheads, and one where they can be made to look very effective.

The Countess's only son was the very image of his father, and quite as imposingly wooden.

If Emma, following her mother-in-law's example, could have courteously and respectfully put him upon a pedestal in some corner where he would not have been in her way, she might have led a very tolerable life with him. The mistake was that she attempted to make him happy.

Poor Emma! As if one possibly could make a wooden figure-head happy! Young Count Lenzdorff was extremely uncomfortable in view of his wife's exertions to make him happy. What ensued was of a very unedifying character: from being simply a state of contented indifference, the marriage became a decidedly irksome bond. Nevertheless it was most unfortunate for Emma when Edmund Lenzdorff, two years after their marriage, lost his life in a railway accident. Had he lived, her existence might at least have been a quiet one; in time she would have relinquished her ill-judged attempts to make him happy, and have found an object in life in the education of her child; while, as it was, he was no sooner dead than her existence began to totter uncertainly, like a ship from which the ballast has been removed.

At first she sickened, as her mother-in-law expressed it, with an attack of acute philanthropy. She haunted the most disreputable corners of Berlin in search of cases of misery to be relieved, never allowing a servant to accompany her, because, as she explained, it might humiliate the poor. Upon one of her excursions her watch was snatched from her, and another time she caught spotted fever. This was very annoying to the Countess Anna, but she forgave her, with--as she was wont to declare--praiseworthy courage, in view of the terrible disease.

Six months afterwards Emma married Strachinsky; and this her mother-in-law did not forgive her.

Since then fourteen years had passed, fourteen years during which she had had nothing whatever to do with poor Emma. And now she was sorry.

Again and again did the Countess Anna revert to the education given to the young girl asleep in the next room.

A woman who could so educate her child, and who could continue so to influence her after her death, was no ordinary character.

Of course she had had fine material to work upon. And the old Countess was conscious of an emotion never awakened within her by her son, yet now aroused by her grand-daughter,--pride in her own flesh and blood. "A splendid creature!" she murmured to herself once or twice, then adding, with a sneer at her own lack of perception, "and I was fool enough to think her ugly at first. Whom does she resemble? she is not in the least like her mother,--nor like my son!" Still pondering, she paused in her monotonous pacing to and fro, strangely thrilled. Going to an antique buhl cabinet with a multitude of drawers, she opened one of them,--a secret drawer, which had long been undisturbed,--and began to look through its contents. At last she found what she sought, a lithograph representing a young girl, décolletée, and with the huge sleeves in fashion in 1830. A very charming young girl the picture portrayed,--Countess Lenzdorff when she was still Anna von Rhödern.

The little faded picture trembled in the old lady's hand: it worked upon her like a spell, carrying her back to a time long forgotten,--a time when life had been to her something different from a farce with a tragic ending, by which one might be vastly entertained, but in which one should scorn to play a part. She was suddenly deeply pained at sight of the beautiful, grave, proud young face: it suggested to her something that had begun very finely and ended in unutterable bitterness, something through which the best and most genial part of her had been destroyed, or at least paralyzed. Hark! What was that? A low, suppressed sob! another! They came from the adjoining room. The old Countess dropped the little picture, and, with a candle in her hand, went to her grand-daughter's bedside. When she heard her grandmother coming, Erika closed her eyes, feigning sleep, but she had not time to wipe away the tears from her cheeks.

Her grandmother set the candle upon the table, and then, bending over the girl, whispered, softly, "Erika!" Erika did not stir. How pathetic she looked!--pale and thin, and yet so noble and charming in spite of the traces of tears.

The Countess sat down upon the edge of the bed and stroked the girl's wet cheeks. "Erika, my darling, what is the matter? Are you homesick?"

Then Erika opened her large eyes and looked gloomily at her grandmother. She answered not a word, but compressed her lips. How could her grandmother ask her if she was homesick, when all that she had of home was a grave?

For one moment the old Countess hesitated; then, lifting the reluctant girl from the pillows, she clasped her to her breast, pressing her lips upon the golden head, and murmuring softly, "Forgive me, my child, forgive me!" For one moment Erika's obstinate resistance was maintained; then she began to sob convulsively; and then--then her grandmother felt the slender form nestle close within her arms, while the weary young head fell upon her shoulder and a sensation of sweet, young warmth penetrated to the Countess's very heart, which suddenly grew quite heavy with tenderness.

Erika was soon sound asleep, but her grandmother still felt no desire to retire to rest. "I will write to Goswyn," she said to herself. "I must tell him she is charming, and that I will make her happy."

CHAPTER VI.

Nine months had passed since Erika's arrival in Berlin. She had travelled much with her grandmother, passing the time in Schlangenbad, Gastein, and the Riviera. As soon as she had become further acquainted with her, Countess Anna had relinquished all thoughts of sending her grand-daughter to a boarding-school. "What could you gain from a boarding-school?" she said. "H'm! Have your corners rubbed off? In my opinion that would be matter of regret. And as for your education, there's too much already in that head of yours for a girl of your age; but that we can't alter, and must make allowance for." And she tapped Erika on the cheek, and looked at her with eyes beaming with pride.

Erika had come to be the centre of her existence, her idol, the most entertaining toy she had ever possessed, the most precious jewel she had ever worn. Moreover, she was the late-awakened poetry of her life, the transfigured resurrection of her own youth. That was all very natural: she was not the first grand-mother in the world who had thought her grand-daughter a phenomenon; and it would have mattered little in any wise if she had not thought it necessary to impress her grand-daughter with the high opinion she entertained of her. Everything that she could do to turn the young girl's head she did, all out of pure inconsequence and love of talking, because never in her life had she been able to keep anything to herself. For in fact she was as unwise as she was clever: her cleverness was an article of luxury, something with which she entertained herself and others, with which she theoretically arranged the most complex combination of circumstances, but which never helped her over the simplest disturbance of her daily life. She was thoroughly unpractical, and was aware of it, without understanding why it was so. Since she could not alter it,--indeed, she never tried to,--she evaded every difficult problem of existence, with the Epicurean love of ease which was her only enduring rule of conduct. Her affection for Erika was now part of her egotism. She was never weary of exulting in the girl's beauty and brilliant qualities; she felt every annoyance experienced by her grand-daughter as a personal pang, every triumph as homage paid to herself; but she never thought of the responsibility she had assumed towards this lovely blossom unfolding in such luxuriance. She was convinced that Erika's life would develop of itself just as her own had done, and in this conviction she felt not the slightest compunction in spoiling the girl from morning until night, and in absolutely forcing her to consider herself the centre of the universe.

With almost equal impatience grandmother and grand-daughter awaited the moment when Erika should enchant the world of Berlin society.

And now it was the beginning of February, and the first Wednesday-afternoon reception of Countess Anna Lenzdorff after her return from Italy. She, whose social indolence had long been proverbial, had sent out numerous cards, many of them to people who had long since supposed themselves forgotten by her. All this, too, without any idea of as yet introducing her grand-daughter to society, but simply that people "might have a glimpse of her."

As a result of the Countess Anna's suddenly developed amiability towards Berlin society, this reception was largely attended. Erika presided at the tea-table in a toilette of studied simplicity and with a regal self-consciousness due to the enthusiasm which her grandmother displayed for her various charms, but which the girl had the good taste to conceal beneath an attractive air of modesty. She did not rattle her teacups awkwardly, she upset no cream, she never pressed a guest to take what had once been declined; in short, she committed none of the blunders so frequently the consequence of shyness in young novices; and she was, as her grandmother expressed it, simply "wonderful." Full forty times the old lady had presented "my grand-daughter," with the same proud intonation, observing narrowly the impression produced upon each guest,--an impression almost sure to be one of pleased surprise; whereupon Countess Lenzdorff--the same Countess Lenzdorff who had been always ready to ridicule, and to ridicule nothing more unsparingly than the mutual admiration characteristic of German families--would begin, in a loud whisper of which not one word escaped Erika's ears, to enumerate her grandchild's unusual attractions: "What do you think of this child who has dropped from the skies into my house to brighten my old age? 'Tis my usual luck, is it not? A charming creature; and what a carriage! Just observe her profile,--now, when she turns her head,--and the line of the cheek and throat. And to think that I was actually reluctant to receive the child! Oh, I treated her shamefully; but I am atoning to her for the past. I spoil her a little; but how can I help it? I thought it would be such a bore to have a young girl in the house, but, on the contrary, she makes me young again. No need to stoop to her intellectually: she is interested in everything. At first I was going to send her to school. H'm! there is more in that golden head of hers than behind the blue spectacles of all the school-mistresses in Germany. And that is not what interests me most: she has a certain frank honesty of nature that enchants me. Oh, she certainly is remarkable."

There the Countess Lenzdorff was right,--Erika was remarkable,--but she was wrong in parading the child before her acquaintances: first because it bored her acquaintances,--when are we ever entertained by listening to the praises of somebody whom we hardly know?--and again because her exaggerated laudation of her grandchild excited the antagonism of her listeners. On this first reception-day she laid the foundation of the unpopularity from which Erika was to suffer long afterwards.

The afternoon was nearing its close; the lamps were lit; three or four ladies only, all in black,--the court was in mourning at the time,--were still sitting in the cosiest corner of the drawing-room. Close by the hearth sat a tiny old lady, Frau von Norbin, née Princess Nimbsch, with a delicately chiselled face framed in silver-gray curls, a face the colour of a faded rose-leaf, and with a thin clear voice that sounded like an antique musical clock and seemed to come from far away. She was about ten years older than Countess Anna, but had been one of her most intimate friends from childhood, belonging also to an old Courland family, which had given the Vienna Congress a good deal of trouble. She had known Talleyrand in her youth, and had corresponded with Chateaubriand. Countess Lenzdorff had a water-colour sketch of her as a young girl with a wreath of vine-leaves on her head, her hair hanging about her shoulders in Bacchante fashion, and with very bare arms holding aloft a tambourine. The rococo sentiment of the faded sketch contrasted strangely with the old lady's dignified decrepitude and poetically softened charm.

Opposite her, and evidently very desirous to stand well with her, sat a certain Frau von Geroldstein, wife of a wealthy merchant who had purchased a patent of nobility in one of the petty German states, without, as he learned too late, acquiring any court privileges for his wife. Indignant at the pettiness of the German sovereign in duodecimo, he had established himself in Berlin, where his wife hoped to find a suitable stage for her social efforts. She had been there three years without finding any aristocratic coigne of vantage for her pretensions; in despair she had fallen back upon celebrities, artists, professors, politicians (even democrats), to lend a certain splendour to her salon. After at last finding her aristocratic vantage-ground at a watering-place in the shape of a General's widow, with debts, and a daughter of forty whom she alleged to be twenty-four, she annoyed her old acquaintances extremely. It was the business of her life to extort forgiveness from society for having once invited Eugene Richter to her house. Society never forgives, but it sometimes forgets if it be convenient to do so. It began to find it convenient to forget all sorts of things about Frau von Geroldstein, not only her political acquaintances, but also that her husband had made his fortune by furnishing army-supplies of doubtful quality.

Frau von Geroldstein was so available, and was besides so ready to make any concessions required of her. She threw Eugene Richter overboard, and developed a touching enthusiasm for the court chaplain Dryander. She bombarded society with invitations to dinners which were excellent, and at which one was sure to meet no undesirable individuals. She paid endless visits, and possessed in fullest measure the article most indispensable to the career of social aspirants,--a very thick skin.

She was about twenty-five years old, and was gifted by nature with a very small waist, which she pinched in to the stifling-point, and with a face which would have been pretty had it not given the impression, as did everything else about her, of artificiality. Of course her court mourning was trimmed with three times as much crape as that of any other lady present; and today she had made it her special business to win the favour of little Frau von Norbin. She had offered her three things already,--her riding-horse for Frau von Norbin's daughter, her lawn-tennis ground (she had a wonderful garden behind her house, which no one used), and her opera-box; but Frau von Norbin's manner was still coldly reserved. At last Frau von Geroldstein discovered from a remark of Countess Lenzdorff's that the old lady's principal interest lay in a children's hospital of which she was the chief patroness. Frau von Geroldstein instantly declared that the improvement of the health of the children of the poor was positively all that she cared for in life: when might she visit the hospital? Countess Lenzdorff smiled somewhat maliciously when Frau von Norbin, caught at last by this benevolent birdlime, plunged into a conversation with Frau von Geroldstein upon the most practical mode of nursing children.

Meanwhile, Countess Lenzdorff turned for amusement to a young maid of honour, a charming person, whose delicate sense of humour had been uninjured by the debilitating atmosphere of the court, and who was now detailing the latest misfortunes of a certain Countess Ida von Brock.

This Countess Brock was a notorious figure in Berlin society. She was usually called the twelfth fairy, since she was frequently omitted in the invitations to some social 'high mass' (the word was of Countess Lenzdorff's invention) and was then sure to appear uninvited and to do all kinds of mischief by her malicious gossip. Every winter she looked out for fresh lions for her menagerie, as her salon was called in familiar conversation,--for artists sufficiently well bred to consort with men of fashion, and for men of fashion sufficiently intelligent to appreciate artists. Since, thanks to her numberless eccentricities and indiscretions, she had quarrelled with all sorts of people, she was always obliged to entreat a few influential friends to procure for her her anthropological curiosities. Some time ago she had applied to Countess Lenzdorff to provide her with 'twelve witty Counts,'--an order which Countess Lenzdorff had declined to fill, upon the plea that the supply was just then exhausted.

During the previous winter the glory of her salon had been a hypnotizer, a young American for whom the Countess Ida had been wildly enthusiastic.

Mr. Van Tromp was his name; he had a dome-like forehead, and he cost nothing; he was quite ready to sacrifice his time without pay for the pleasure of mingling in good society,--a pleasure more highly prized by an American, as is well known, than by any European aspirant. At the close of the season the Countess's footman had unfortunately put aqua-fortis in the chambermaid's tea, and, as the Countess ascribed the crime to the influence of Van Tromp, she straightway relinquished her hypnotic pastime, the more willingly as most of her other guests considered it a rather dangerous game.

Van Tromp was informed of this when he next visited the Countess. He acquiesced in her decision, and amiably and unselfishly hoped that without any further exercise of his peculiar talent she would allow him to visit her 'as a friend.' Countess Brock, however, wrote him a note thanking him for his great kindness, but at the same time insisting that she could not possibly allow him to waste his time at her house; the people frequenting it were in fact quite too insignificant to associate with so great a man as himself.

This mode of turning out of doors people whom she could no longer make use of she called treating them with delicacy and tact. What Mr. Van Tromp thought of it is not known: he revenged himself, however, by writing a book upon Berlin society, which, as it was full of scandalous stories and appeared anonymously, lived through twenty-five editions.

With a view of making her Thursday evenings attractive this year, Countess Brock had determined to have some one of her favourite modern dramas read aloud at each of them, and had engaged the services of a handsome young actor with a broad chest and a strong voice as reader. The readings had begun the previous week with a German translation of Dumas' "Femme de Claude."

The young maid of honour had been present, and she declared it "comical beyond description."

There were several young girls among the audience, and scarcely had the handsome young actor with the powerful voice reached the middle of the second act when there was a rustling in the assembly, caused by a mother's conducting her daughter from the room. This went on all through the evening. Whilst the reader pursued his way with enthusiasm, each scene frightened away some two or three delicate-minded individuals, until the hostess found herself left almost entirely alone with the handsome young actor and a few gentlemen. "I persisted in remaining," the maid of honour continued, amid the laughter of her audience, "but I assure you----"

At this moment the servant announced "Frau Countess Brock," and there entered a woman of medium height, in a large high-shouldered seal-skin coat, for which departure from the prescribed court mourning a long crape veil atoned, a wonder of a veil, draped picturesquely over a Mary Stuart bonnet and hanging down over a slightly-bent back. Her grizzled hair was arranged above her forehead in curls, and her face, which must once have been handsome, was disfigured by affected contortions, sometimes grotesque, sometimes malicious, often both together.

Countess Lenzdorff immediately presented her niece to the new-comer, but the 'wicked fairy' paid no heed, and Erika made her a graceful courtesy which she did not see. She gave additional proof of near-sightedness by almost sitting down upon Frau von Norbin, and by mistaking Frau von Geroldstein for a distinguished authoress aged seventy.

Frau von Norbin smiled good-naturedly, and Frau von Geroldstein declared the blunder delicious. Privately she was furious, not at being mistaken for an aged woman, but at being supposed to be an authoress. However, she could endure it, since she had arranged a visit with Frau von Norbin to the children's hospital for the next afternoon. That was a triumph, at all events.

"H'm! h'm! what were you all laughing at when I came in?" asked the 'wicked fairy,' taking a seat beside Countess Lenzdorff.

Upon which a rather embarrassed silence ensued, and she went on with a sigh: "At my disaster, of course. Yes, yes, I know, Clara,"--this to the maid of honour,--"you will tell the désastre to all Berlin. It was terrible!--Oh, thanks, no,"--this with a polite grin to Erika, who offered her a cup of tea. "That frightful actor!" she wailed, raising her black-gloved hands, palms outward,--a gesture peculiarly her own and used to express the climax of despair. "I have already denounced him to our principal managers: he never will get any position in a Berlin theatre. Think of his insolence in reading my guests out of my drawing-room and showing me up as a lover of questionable literature."

"Was the drama one of his selection?" asked Countess Lenzdorff.

"No; I chose it myself. But, good heavens! the piece was of no importance. The mode of delivery was everything. All he had to do was to skip lightly over the questionable parts; instead of which he fairly roared them in the faces of my guests."

"Evidently he liked them best," the maid of honour said, with a laugh.

"Of course," the 'wicked fairy' went on, indignantly; "these people have neither tact nor sense of decency. Well, I have forbidden the man my house for the future."

"Like Mr. Van Tromp," Countess Lenzdorff interposed.

"Oh, I am too easily imposed upon," Countess Brock sighed. "The worst of it is that I have nothing now in prospect for my Thursdays."

"I saw in the newspaper that a couple of almehs on their way from Paris to Petersburg are to appear at Kroll's," Countess Lenzdorff observed, maliciously: "you might hire them for an evening."

"That would be against the law," remarked Frau von Geroldstein, who knew about everything and had no sense of humour. Countess Brock, who had declared that nothing should ever induce her to receive 'the Archduchess,' as she called Frau von Geroldstein, pretended not to hear; Frau von Norbin begged to be told what an almeh was. Countess Lenzdorff laughed, and was just enlightening her in a low tone, out of regard for her grand-daughter, as to this Oriental specialty, when Herr von Sydow was announced.

"Goswyn!" exclaimed Countess Anna, evidently delighted. "It is good of you to come at last, but not good to have let us wait so long for you."

"I came as soon as I heard of your return," Sydow replied.

"And, as usual, you come as late as possible," his old friend remarked, in an access of absence of mind, "in hopes of finding me alone."

"I call that a skilful method of turning people out of doors," exclaimed Frau von Norbin, laughing, and in spite of her hostess's protestations she arose and took her leave, accompanied by the young maid of honour.

Whilst Erika, with the modest grace which she had learned so quickly, conducted the two ladies to the vestibule, where only two or three remained of the crowd of footmen that had occupied it early in the afternoon, Goswyn's eyes rested on the wall, where, to his great surprise, hung the same Böcklin that had been removed upon his former visit in view of the expected arrival of the Countess's grand-daughter.

"So you sent the young Countess to boarding-school?" he remarked.

"What?" exclaimed the Countess, indignant at such an idea. "You must see that I am far too old to forego the pleasure of having the child with me." Then, observing that the young man's eyes were directed towards her favourite picture, she suddenly remembered the conversation she had had with him in the spring. "Oh, yes; you are thinking of how hard it seemed to me to receive the child. It makes me laugh to recall it. As for the picture, there was no need to hide it from her: she knew the entire Vatican by heart when she came to me, from photographs. She looks at everything, and sees beyond it! I am longing to have you know her: did you not notice her? though this February twilight, to be sure, is very dim. She has just escorted Hedwig Norton from the room."

"Was that your grand-daughter?" Sydow asked, in surprise. "I thought it was your niece Odette."

"Where were your eyes?" Countess Lenzdorff asked, in an aggrieved tone. "Odette is pretty enough, but a grisette,--a mere grisette,--in comparison with Erika. Erika is a head taller; and then, my dear, un port de reine,--absolument, un port de reine. Ah, here she comes.--Erika, Herr von Sydow wishes to be presented to you: you know who he is,--a great favourite of mine, and the nicest young fellow in all Berlin."

Erika inclined her head graciously, and, whilst the young man blushed at the old lady's exaggerated praise, said, with perfect self-possession, "Of course my grandmother has enlightened you as to my perfections. I think we may both be quite content, Herr von Sydow."

He bowed low and took the offered chair beside his hostess. He knew that Countess Lenzdorff expected him to say something to her grand-daughter, but he could not; he was mute with astonishment. It was true that the Countess had written him shortly after the young girl's arrival that she was charming, but he had regarded this asseveration as a piece of remorse on her part, knowing that remorse will incline people to exaggerate, especially kind-hearted, selfish people, for whom the memory of injustice done by them is among the greatest annoyances of life.

He could not reconcile his memory of the distressed, pale, shy girl whom he had seen for an instant with this extremely beautiful and self-possessed young lady who seemed expressly devised to act as a cordial for her grandmother's Epicurean selfishness. He did not know why, but he was half vexed that Erika was so beautiful: the previous tender compassion with which she had inspired him seemed ridiculous.

The words for which he sought in vain with which to begin a conversation she soon found. "It is strange that you should not have recognized me here in my grandmother's drawing-room, where you might have expected me to be," she said, gaily. "I should have known you in Africa."

"Where have you seen each other before?" the Countess asked, curiously.

"On the stairs, on the evening of my arrival," Erika explained. "Evidently you do not recall it, Herr von Sydow: I ought not to have confessed how perfectly I remember."

"Oh, I remember it very well," said Sydow, and then he paused suddenly with a faint smile, a smile peculiarly his own, and behind which some sensitive souls suspected a degree of malice, but which actually concealed only a certain agitation and embarrassment, a momentary non-comprehension of the situation. He was not very clever, except in moments of great danger, when he developed unusual presence of mind.

"After all, 'tis no wonder that you made more impression upon me than I did upon you," Erika went on, easily and simply. "In the first place, you were the first Prussian officer I had ever met; I had never seen anything in Austria so tall and broad: your epaulettes inspired me with a degree of awe. And then you bowed so respectfully. You can't imagine how much good it did me. I was half dead with terror: you looked as if you pitied me."

"I did pity you, Countess," he confessed, frankly. The tone of her voice, which had first won over her grandmother, was sweet in his ears. Moreover, she seemed very much of a child, now that she was talking. The impression of self-possession which she had at first given him was quite obliterated.

"You knew that my grandmother was not glad to have me?" she asked.

"Yes, I told him so, and he scolded me for it," Countess Lenzdorff declared, with a nod.

"But, my dear Countess!" Sydow remonstrated.

"Oh, I always speak the truth," the Countess exclaimed,--"always, that is, if possible, and sometimes even oftener: it is the only virtue upon which I pride myself. And you were right, Goswyn. But do you know how you look now? As if you were ashamed of your pity. Aha! I have hit the nail upon the head, and a very sensitive nail, too. It is human nature. There is one extravagance which even the most magnanimous never forgive themselves,--wasted compassion. In fact, you must perceive that the child has no need of the article."

Goswyn was silent. If at first the Countess had hit the nail upon the head, he was by no means convinced of the truth of her last remark. Something in the old Countess's manner to her grand-daughter went against the grain with him: once while she was talking to him, and Erika, sitting beside her, nestled close to her with the innocent grace of a young creature to whom a little tenderness is as necessary as is sunshine to the opening flower, the grandmother suddenly, with a significant glance at Sydow, put her finger beneath the girl's chin and turned her face so that he might observe the particularly lovely outline of her cheek.

Meanwhile, Countess Brock was defending herself with much ill humour and many grimaces from the exaggerated amiability of the 'Archduchess,' which found vent especially in the offer of a specific for the cure of neuralgia, from which the 'wicked fairy' suffered constantly, and which partly explained the peculiar twitching of her features. Extricating herself at last with much bluntness from the snare thus spread to entrap her favour, Countess Brock turned to the young officer, who, strange to relate, was her nephew. Strange to relate; for there certainly could be no greater contrast than that of his characteristic grave simplicity with her restless affectation.

"My dear Goswyn!" she said, in a honeyed tone, taking a chair beside him.

"Well, aunt?"

"You scarcely spoke to me when you came in," she continued, reproachfully, in the same sweet tone.

"You seemed very much occupied."

"Occupied? yes, occupied indeed. For the last quarter of an hour I have been struggling like a fly in a trap. You come just at the right moment, dear boy." And she tapped his epaulette with a caressing forefinger.

"Ah? Do you wish me to audit your accounts?" he asked, dryly: he had but slight sympathy with her.

"God forbid!" exclaimed the 'wicked fairy,' raising her black-gloved hands with her characteristic gesture. "Nothing so prosaic as that this time. It was about----"

"About your Thursdays," her nephew interrupted her.

"Rightly guessed, dear boy. I want a new star; and you can help me a little. Do you know G----?"

"The pianist?"

"Yes."

"I have practised with him once or twice." Goswyn played the violin in moments of leisure, a weakness to which he did not like to hear allusions made.

"There! I thought so. You must bring him to me."

"Pray excuse me," the young man said, decidedly. "I will have nothing to do with introducing any artist to you. I know too well what will ensue. You will squeeze him like a lemon, and then show him the door on the pretence that he outrages your æsthetic sense,--that his manners are not to your taste. You should inform yourself on that point before making use of him. We all know that artists are not always well bred."

"Too true!" sighed Frau von Geroldstein, edging her chair nearer to the speaker.

"All artists are ill-mannered," Countess Lenzdorff maintained, with her good-humoured insolence.

"Even the greatest?" asked Erika, shyly. She was thinking of the young painter whom she had met by the monster of a bridge, and she could not decide whether to resent her grandmother's arrogance or to be ashamed of the childish admiration in which she had indulged all these years for the handsome vagabond of whom she had never heard since.

As Frau von Geroldstein was gently sighing, "Ah, yes, even the greatest," Countess Anna interposed with a laugh, "They are the worst of all. Artistic mediocrities acquire a certain drawing-room polish far sooner than do the great geniuses who live in a world of their own. And, after all, average good manners are only the dress-suit for average men: they rarely sit well upon a genius. I care very little for them: a little naïve awkwardness does not displease me at all; on the contrary, to be quite to my mind an artist must always have something of the bear about him: I take no interest whatever in those trim dandies, 'gentlemen artists,' who think more of the polish of their boots than of their art."

"Nor do I," sighed Frau von Geroldstein.

"H'm! your discourse is always very instructive," the 'wicked fairy' declared, "but it does not help me in my trouble." She sighed tragically and arose. As she did so, her fur boa slipped from her shoulders to the ground. Erika picked it up and handed it to her. The 'wicked fairy' stared at the young girl through her eye-glass, surprise slowly dawning in her distorted features. "You are the grand-daughter from Bohemia?" she asked, still with her eye-glass at her eyes.

"Yes, Frau Countess."

"Ah, excuse me: I have been taking you all this time for my dear Anna's companion. Now I remember she died last year: I sent some flowers to her funeral. Poor thing! she was desperately tiresome, but an excellent girl; you must remember her, my dear Goswyn. You used to call her the Duke of Wellington, because she was a little deaf and used to go on talking without hearing what was said to her. How could I make such a mistake! But I am very near-sighted, and very absent-minded." She put her finger beneath Erika's chin and smiled an indescribable smile. "And you are very pretty, my dear. What is your name?"

"Erika."

"Erika!--Heather Blossom! And you come from Bohemia. How poetic!--how poetic! She is positively charming, this grand-daughter of yours, Anna! Do you not think so, Goswyn?"

Sydow flushed crimson, frowned, and was silent.

"I must go: I seem to be saying the wrong thing," Countess Brock ran on; then, looking towards the window, "Good heavens!" she exclaimed, "it is pouring! Pray let them call a droschky."

"Erika, ring the bell," said Countess Lenzdorff.

Before Erika could obey, Frau von Geroldstein extended a detaining arm.

"But, my dear Countess Erika, why send for a droschky, when my carriage is waiting below, and it will give me the greatest pleasure to drive Countess Brock home?--Surely you will permit me?"--this last addressed to the 'wicked fairy.'

"I really cannot. I know you far too slightly to impose such a burden upon you," Countess Brock replied, crossly.

"Why call it a burden? it is a pleasure," the other insisted.

"There is no pleasure in driving with me: I am forced to have all the windows closed," said the Countess.

Meanwhile, Erika stood uncertain whether or not to ring the bell, when suddenly affairs took a turn most favourable for Frau von Geroldstein.

Herr Reichert was announced, and without another word Countess Brock vanished with Frau von Geroldstein, in whose coupé she was driven home.

She had private reasons for this hurried retreat. Reichert, a special favourite of Anna Lenzdorff's, an animal painter with a lion face and an inexhaustible fund of anecdote, was among the 'remords' of the 'wicked fairy.' She called her 'remords' the assemblage of men of talent of whom she had made use only to throw them aside remorselessly afterwards.

The animal painter's visit was a brief one, and none of the Countess Lenzdorff's guests remained save Sydow, who stayed in obedience to the Countess's whispered invitation.

"There! now I have had enough," she exclaimed, as the door closed behind her beloved animal painter. "Stay and dine, Goswyn: we dine early--at six--tonight, and then you can go with us to the Academy. Joachim is to play, and I have a spare ticket for you."

CHAPTER VII.

It is later by four-and-twenty hours. Countess Lenzdorff, with her grand-daughter, has just returned from a drive in a close carriage,--a drive interrupted by a couple of calls, and by a little shopping in the interest of the young girl's wardrobe.

She is now sitting near the fire, a teacup in her hand, and saying, "You cannot go out very much this season, especially since you are not to be presented until next winter, but you can divert yourself with a few small entertainments. It was well to order your gown from Petrus in time: people must open their eyes when they see you first."

Meanwhile, Erika has taken off her seal-skin jacket, and is sitting beside her grandmother, thinking of the gown that has been ordered for her to-day,--a white cachemire, so simple,--oh, so simple! "Nobody must think of your dress when they see you," her grandmother had said: nevertheless it was a triumph of art, this gown.

"Everything about you must be perfect in style upon your first appearance in the world," her grandmother now says. "People must find nothing to criticise about you at first: afterwards we may, perhaps, allow ourselves a little eccentricity. I have a couple of gowns in my head for you which Marianne can arrange admirably, but just at first we must show that you can dress like everybody else,--with a slight difference. You must produce a certain effect. Give me another cup of tea, my child."

Erika hands her the cup. The old lady, pats her arm caressingly. "Petrus is quite proud to assist at your début: at first I thought of sending to Paris for a dress for you," she adds, and then there is a silence.

The old lady has lain back in her arm-chair and fallen asleep. She never lies down to take a nap in the daytime, but she often dozes in her chair at this hour.

Twilight sets in,--sets in unusually soon and quickly to-night, for the winter which had seemed to have bidden farewell to Berlin has returned with cruel intensity. The rain which on the previous day had forced Countess Brock into Frau von Geroldstein's arms and coupé has to-day turned to snow: it is lying a foot deep in the gardens in front of the grand houses in Bellevue Street, and is falling so fast that it has no chance to grow black: it lies on the trees in the Thiergarten, each twig bearing its own special weight, and down one side of each trunk is a broad bluish-white stripe; it lies on the roofs, on the palings of the little city gardens, yes, even on the telegraph-wires which stretch in countless lines against the purplish-gray sky above the white city.

For a while Erika gazes out at the noiselessly-falling flakes: the snow still gleams white through the twilight.

The girl has ceased to think of her gown: her thoughts have carried her far back,--back to Luzano. That last winter there,--how cold and long it had been!--snow, snow everywhere; nothing to be seen but a vast field of snow beneath a gloomy sky, the poor little village, the frozen brook, the river, the trees, all buried beneath it. The roads were obliterated; there was some difficulty in procuring the necessaries of existence. The cold was so great that fuel cost "a fortune," as her step-father expressed it. Erika was allowed none for the school-room, where she was wont to sit, nor for the former drawing-room, where was her piano. The greater part of the day she was forced to spend in the room, blackened with tobacco-smoke, where Strachinsky had his meals, played patience, and dozed on the sofa over his novels. What an atmosphere! The room was never aired, and reeked of stale cigar-smoke, coal gas, and the odour of ill-cooked food. Once Erika had privately broken a windowpane to admit some fresh air. But what good had it done? Since there was no glazier to be had immediately, the hole in the window had been stuffed up with rags and straw.

Yet the worst of that last winter had been the constant association with Strachinsky.

One day, in desperation, she had hurried out of doors as if driven by fiends, and had gone deep into the forest. Around her reigned dead silence. There was nothing but snow everywhere: she could not have got through it but that she wore high boots. Here and there the black bough of a dead fir would protrude against the sky. No life was to be seen,--not even a bird. The only sounds that at intervals broke the silence were the creak of some bough bending beneath its weight of snow, and the dull thud of its burden falling on the snow beneath.

As she was returning to her home she was overcome by a sudden weakness and a sense of utter discouragement.

Why endure this torture any longer? Who could tell when it would end, this intense disgust, this gnawing degrading misery, suffering without dignity,--a martyrdom without faith, without hope?

And there, just at the edge of the forest, close to the meadow that spread before her like a huge winding-sheet, she lay down in the snow, to put an end to it: the cold would soon bring her release, she thought. How long she lay there she could not have told,--the drowsiness which she had heard was the precursor of the end had begun to steal over her,--when on the low horizon bounding the plain she saw the full moon rise, huge, misty, blood-red. The outlying firs of the forest cast broad dark shadows upon the snow, and upon her rigid form. The snow began to sparkle; the world suddenly grew beautiful. She seemed to feel a grasp upon her shoulder, and a voice called to her, "Stand up: life is not yet finished for you: who knows what the future may have in store?"

Hope, curiosity, perhaps only the inextinguishable love of life that belongs to youth and health, appealed to her. She rose to her feet and forced her stiffened limbs to carry her home.

Good heavens! it was hardly a year since! and now! She looks away from the large windows, behind the panes of which there is now only a bluish-white shimmer to be discerned, and gazes around the room. How cosey and comfortable it is! In the darkening daylight the outlines of objects show like a half-obliterated drawing. The subjects of the pictures on the walls cannot be discerned, but their gilt frames gleam through the all-embracing veil of twilight. There is a ruddy light on the hearth, partially hidden from the girl's eyes by the figure of the old Countess in her arm-chair; the air is pure and cool, and there is a faint agreeable odour of burning wood. From beneath the windows comes the noise of rolling wheels, deadened by the snow, and there is now and then a faint crackle from the logs in the chimney, now falling into embers.

Erika revels in a sense of comfort, as only those can who have known the reverse in early life. Suddenly she is possessed by a vague distress, an oppressive melancholy,--the memory of her mother who had voluntarily left all this pleasant easy-going life--for what? Her nerves quiver.

Meanwhile, Lüdecke brings in two lamps, which in consequence of their large coloured shades fail to illumine the corners of the room, and hardly do more than "teach light to counterfeit a gloom." That grave dignitary was still occupied in their arrangement, when he turned his head and paused, listening to an animated colloquy in two voices just outside the portière which separated the Countess's boudoir from the reception-rooms. Evidently Friedrich, Lüdecke's young adjutant, who was not yet thoroughly drilled, was endeavouring to protect his mistress from a determined intruder.

"If you please, Frau Countess, her Excellency is not at home," he said for the third time, whereupon an irritated feminine voice made reply,--

"I know that the Countess is at home; and if she is not, I will wait for her."

"The fairy," said Countess Lenzdorff, awaking. "Poor Friedrich! he is doing what he can, but there is nothing for it but to put the best face upon the matter." And, rising, she advanced to meet Countess Brock, who came through the portière with a very angry face.

"That wretch!" she exclaimed. "I believe he was about to use personal violence to detain me!" And she sank exhausted into an arm-chair.

"Since I ordered him to deny me to every one, he only did his duty, although he may have failed in the manner of its performance," Countess Lenzdorff replied.

"But he ought to have known that I was an exception," the fairy rejoined, still angrily.

"Yes, he ought to have known. And now tell me what you have on your mind, for I see by your bonnet's being all awry that you have not engaged in a duel with that simpleton Friedrich without some special cause."

"Ah, yes!" Countess Brock groaned. "I have a request--an audacious request--to make, and you must not refuse me."

"We shall see. Is it fifty yards of red flannel for your association for the relief of rheumatic old women?"

"Oh, if it were only that I should have no doubt of your assent,--every one knows how generous you are; but you have certain whims." The wicked fairy's smile was sourly sweet: "I begged Goswyn to prefer my request, for I know how much you like him, and that you would not willingly refuse him anything; but he would not do it. He behaves so queerly to me."

"Tell me what you mean, without any further preliminaries. I am curious to know what the matter is with which Goswyn will have nothing to do."

"It is about my next Thursday,--no, not the next, I shall simply skip that, but the one after the next,--which, under the circumstances, ought to be particularly brilliant. I want to have tableaux, and two of the greatest beauties in Berlin have promised to help me,--Dorothea Sydow and Constance Mühlberg," Countess Brock explained, breathlessly.

"H'm! that is magnificent," her friend interposed.

"Well, yes; but every one knows them by heart, and I want to show the Berlin folk something new. In short, I have come to the conclusion that the great attraction for my next evening reception must be your enchanting grand-daughter," the 'fairy' declared, wriggling herself out of her seal-skin coat.

Erika, who had hitherto kept modestly in the background, occupying herself with some embroidery, here paused, her needle suspended in the air, and looked up curiously.

"My grand-daughter?" her grandmother exclaimed, in surprise.

"Yes, yes; I have fallen in love with your granddaughter,--actually fallen in love with her. She has a natural air of distinction, with a certain barbaric charm which is immensely aristocratic: it reminds me of some noble wild animal: the aristocracy always reminds me of a noble wild animal, and the bourgeoisie of a well-fed barn-yard fowl,--except that the former is never hunted and the latter never slaughtered. But, then, who can tell, par le temps qui court? Mais je me perds. The matter in hand is not socialism nor any other threatening horror, but my tableaux. There are to be only three,--Senta lost in dreams of the Flying Dutchman, by Constance Mühlberg, Werther's Charlotte, by Thea Sydow, and last your grand-daughter as a heather blossom. She will bear away the palm, of course: the others are not to be compared with her."

Countess Lenzdorff looked at Erika and smiled good-naturedly, as she saw how the young girl had gone on sewing diligently as if hearing nothing of this conversation. It never occurred to the old lady that it might not be advisable thus calmly to extol that young person's beauty in her presence.

"You will let the child do me this favour, will you not?" the 'fairy' persisted. "It is all admirably arranged. Riedel is to pose them,--you know him,--the little painter with such good manners who has his shirts laundered in Paris."

"Oh, that colour-grinder!" Countess Lenzdorff said, contemptuously.

The 'fairy' shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "Colour-grinder or not, he is one of the few artists whom one can meet socially."

"Yes, yes; and he will find it much easier to arrange a couple of pictures than to paint them," Countess Lenzdorff declared.

"Then you consent? I may count upon your grand-daughter?"

"I must first consider the matter," Countess Lenzdorff replied, but in a tone which plainly showed that she was not averse to granting her eccentric old friend's request.

"I see that affairs look favourable for me," Countess Brock murmured. "Thank heaven! I think I should have killed myself if I had met with a refusal. What o'clock is it?"

"Six o'clock,--a few minutes past. Where are you going?"

"To dine with the Geroldsteins. We are going to the Lessing Theatre afterwards. There have been no tickets to be had for ten days past."

"You--are going to dine with the Geroldsteins?" The old Countess clasped her hands in frank, if discourteous, astonishment.

"I am going to dine with the Geroldsteins," the 'wicked fairy' repeated, with irritated emphasis; "and what of it? You have received her for more than a year."

"I have no social prejudices. Moreover, I do not receive her: I simply do not turn her out of doors."

"Well, at present she suits me," Countess Brock declared, her features working violently. "I have been longing for two months to be present at this first representation, without being able to get a seat: she offers me the best seat in a box,--no, she does not offer it to me, she entreats me to take it as a favour to her. And then think how I begged Goswyn yesterday to introduce G---- to me. No, he would not do it. She will see to all that. She is the most obliging woman in all Germany. And then--this very morning I saw her driving with Hedwig Norbin in the Thiergarten. Surely any one may know a woman with whom Hedwig Norbin drives through the Thiergarten."

She ran off, repeating her request as she vanished. "You will let me know your decision to-morrow, Anna?"

Countess Lenzdorff shook her head as she looked after her,--shook her head and smiled. She is still smiling as she thoughtfully paces the room to and fro.

What is she considering? Whether it is fitting thus, in this barefaced manner, to call the attention of society to a young girl's beauty. Evidently Goswyn does not think it right; but Goswyn is a prig. The Countess's delicacy gives way and troubles her no further. Another consideration occupies her: will her grand-daughter hold her own in comparison with the acknowledged beauties who are to share with her the honours of the evening? Her gaze rests upon Erika. "That crackbrained Elise is right. Erika hold her own beside them! the others cannot compare with her."

"What do you say, child?" she asked, approaching the girl. "Would you like to do it?"

"Yes," Erika confesses, frankly.

"It would not be quite undesirable," says her grandmother, whose mind is entirely made up. "You cannot go out much this year, and it would be something to appear once to excite attention and then to retire to the background for the rest of the season. Curiosity would be aroused, and would prepare a fine triumph for you next year."

The following morning Countess Brock received a note from Anna Lenzdorff containing a consent to her request.

About ten days afterwards Countess Erika Lenzdorff presented herself before a select public, chosen from the most exclusive society in Berlin, as "Heather Blossom," in a ragged petticoat, with her hair falling about her to her knees.

It was a strange soirée, that in which the youthful beauty made her first appearance in the world.

Countess Brock, the childless widow of a very wealthy man who had derived much of his social prestige from his wife, had inherited from the deceased the use during her lifetime of a magnificent mansion, together with an income the narrowness of which was in striking contrast with her residence.

The consequence whereof was much shabbiness amid brilliant surroundings.

The tableaux were given in a spacious ball-room, decorated with white and gold, at one end of which a small stage had been erected. The stage-decorations had been painted for nothing, by aspiring young artists. The curtain consisted of several worn old yellow damask portières sewed together, upon which the 'wicked fairy' herself had painted various fantastic flowers to conceal the threadbare spots.

Whatever ridicule might attach to her Thursday evenings generally, on this one her preparations were crowned with success. The effect of the whole was greatly heightened by the musical accompaniment, furnished by G---- at the instigation of the indefatigable Frau von Geroldstein.

For once this talented but shy young virtuoso forgot himself, and presented his audience with something more than a pattern-card of conquered technical difficulties.

Whether it were the result of caprice, or of a vivid impression made upon him by Erika, or of a presumptuous desire to do all that he could to add to her triumph, thus irritating the acknowledged beauties of the day, certain it is that he played all his musical trumps in his accompaniment to the representation of "Heather Blossom."

Old Countess Lenzdorff, who had been wont to compare his clear sharp performance to a richly-furnished cockney drawing-room far too brilliantly lighted, and with gas into the bargain, could scarcely believe her ears when as an introduction to the third picture the low wailing notes of the familiar but lovely melody "Ah, had I never left my moor!" rang through the crowded assemblage of fashionable people. How sweet, how melancholy, were the tones breathed from the instrument! they seemed to rouse an echo in the soul of Boris Lensky's magic violin.

The curtain drew up, and revealed a waste, dreary heath, treated with tolerable conventionality by the amiable Riedel, and in the midst of it a single figure, tall, slender, in a worn petticoat and coarse white linen shift that left exposed the nobly-formed neck and the long and as yet rather thin arms, a pale face framed in heavy gleaming masses of hair, the features delicate yet strong, and with unfathomable, indescribable eyes.

The painter Riedel had tried to force the Heather Blossom into the attitude of Ary Scheffer's Mignon. She had apparently yielded to his efforts, but at the last moment had posed according to her own wish, with her head bent slightly forward and her arms hanging straight by her side.

The audacious simplicity of her pose puzzled the spectators, and those elegant votaries of fashion, weary of counterfeit presentments of art and poetry, were in a manner shaken out of the monotonous indifference of their lives at sight of the blank dumb despair embodied in this young creature. They seemed suddenly to feel among them the working of some mysterious force of nature.

The curtain remained lifted for a longer time than usual; the young girl maintained her motionless attitude with a strength born of vanity; the wailing, sighing music sounded on.

The curtain fell. The public was wild with enthusiasm. Three times the curtain rose; but when there was a demand for a fourth glimpse of the strange, pathetic picture, it remained obstinately down: Erika had retired.

"Oh, the witch!" murmured old Countess Lenzdorff to Hedwig Norbin, who sat beside her.

The stupidest and most innocent of country grandmothers could not have exulted more frankly in her grand-daughter's triumph than did the clever Countess Lenzdorff. She was never weary of hearing the child praised: her appetite for compliments was inappeasable.

When Erika, transformed and modestly shy in her new gown from Petrus, appeared among the guests, she aroused enthusiasm afresh, and was immediately surrounded. She won the admiration not only of all the men present, but also of all the old ladies. Of course the younger women were somewhat envious, as were likewise the mothers with marriageable daughters. In a word, nothing was lacking to make her appearance a brilliant success.

Her grandmother presented her right and left, and was unwearied in describing in whispered confidences to her friends the girl's extraordinary talents and capacity. Any other grandmother so conducting herself would have been called ridiculous, but it was not easy so to stigmatize Anna Lenzdorff; instead there was some irritation excited against the innocent object of such exaggerated praise, the girl herself, to whom various disagreeable traits were ascribed. The younger women pronounced her entirely self-occupied and thoroughly calculating.

She was both in a certain degree, but after a precocious, childish fashion, that was diverting, rather than reprehensible.

Countess Mühlenberg, the wife of an officer in the guards who did not appreciate her and with whom she was very unhappy, had appeared as Senta out of pure good nature, and held herself quite aloof from Erika's detractors,--in fact, she showed the young débutante much kindness,--but Dorothea Sydow's dislike was almost ill-bred in its manifestation.

She was a strangely fascinating and yet repulsive person,--very well born, even of royal blood, a princess, in fact, but so wretchedly poor that she had rejoiced when a simple squire laid his heart and his wealth at her feet. Her family at first cried out against the misalliance, but finally consented to admit that the young lady had done very well for herself. Some of her equals in rank came even to envy her after a while, for all agreed that there was not in the world another husband who so idolized and spoiled his wife, indulging her in every whim, as did Otto von Sydow his Princess Dorothea.

He was Goswyn's elder brother, and the heir of the Sydow estates, which was why there was such a difference in the incomes of the brothers. In all else the advantage was decidedly on Goswyn's side.

Otto looked like him, but his face lacked the force of Goswyn's; his features were rounder, his shoulders broader, his hands and feet larger, and he had a great deal of colour. The 'wicked fairy' maintained that he showed the blood of his bourgeoise mother.

Countess Lenzdorff, who had been an intimate friend of the late Frau von Sydow, denied this, insisting that the Sydow mother had enriched the family not only by her money but also by her pure, strong, red blood. In fact, Otto was a genuine Sydow: such types are not rare among the Prussian country gentry.

He was one of the men who always show to most advantage in the country and out of doors, for whom a drawing-room, even the most spacious, is too confined. In a brilliant crowd he looked as if he could hardly catch his breath. With the shyness not unusual in men with much-admired wives, he was wont to efface himself in a corner, emerging to make himself useful at supper-time, and never speaking except when he encountered some one still less at home in society than himself. He was never weary of watching his wife, devouring her with his eyes, drinking in her grace and beauty.

Many people declared that she was not beautiful, only distinguished in appearance. In fact, she was both to an astonishing degree, and aristocratic to her finger-tips. Tall, slender almost to emaciation, with long, narrow hands and feet, a head proudly erect, and sharply-cut features, her carriage was inimitable, her walk grace itself. Wherever she went she attracted universal attention. She wore her fair hair short in close curls about her small head, a piece of audacity indeed, and she talked quickly in a rather high voice, and with a slight defect in her utterance, characteristic of the royal family to which she was related, and which made some people nervous, while her countless adorers declared it enchanting.

However, beautiful or not, she had been a leader in Berlin society for two years, and would brook no rival near her throne.

The evening ran its course; the servants opened the doors into the dining-hall; the ladies took their places at small tables, while the gentlemen served them--the entertainment being but meagre--before satisfying their own appetites. Some of them performed this duty with skill and dexterity, while others rattled plates and glasses and invariably dropped something.

Erika, paler than usual, with sparkling eyes and very red lips, sat at a table with a charmingly fresh young girl about her own age, but ten years younger intellectually. Nevertheless the child's development might almost be said to be finished, while Erika's had scarcely passed its first stage. She had honestly tried to talk with this companion, but without success; nor had she much to say to the young men who, attracted by her beauty, thronged around her. Reaction had set in: her enjoyment of her triumph had been succeeded by a strange restlessness.

Dorothea von Sydow was sitting near by at a table with one of the most fashionable women in Berlin, an Austrian diplomat, an officer of cuirassiers, and one of her cousins, Prince Helmy Nimbsch. All five had remarkably good appetites and talked incessantly. In their midst sat Frau von Geroldstein, a vacant place on each side of her,--solemn and mute. No one knew her, no one spoke to her, but she was sitting among people of rank and was content. Her only regret was that she had mistaken the continuance of the court mourning by a day, and had consequently appeared in a plain black gown in an assemblage of women in full dress with feathers and diamonds in their hair. To justify her error she had hastily trumped up a story of the death of a near relative.

Goswyn's place was with the elder women, a distinction that frequently fell to his share. He looked grave and anxious, and Countess Lenzdorff, who had commanded his presence at her table, with her usual imperiousness, reproached him for being tiresome and bad-tempered. From time to time he glanced towards Erika, of whom he could see nothing save a slender neck with a knot of gold-gleaming hair, a little pink ear, and now and then the outline of a softly-rounded cheek.

Yes, she was bewitching, there was no denying it, but she must be insufferable, there was no doubt of that either. The idea of thus making a show of a girl scarcely eighteen! It was in such bad taste: it was absolutely unprincipled: the old Countess, in her senseless vanity, was doing the child a positive injury. At times a kind of rage half choked him: he could have shaken his old friend, to whom he had been as a son, and who had from his boyhood petted him far more than her own child. Again he glanced towards Erika. Then his thoughtful gaze wandered across to the round table where his sister-in-law was sitting. She looked particularly well in a dress of white velvet with an antique Spanish necklace of emeralds around her slender neck. It was all very lovely, but her short hair was not in harmony with it.

Beside her sat her cousin, Prince Helmy Nimbsch, a good-tempered dandy, scarcely twenty-five years old, with large light-blue eyes and a face smoothly shaven, except for a moustache. As Goswyn looked at Thea, she was laughing at her cousin over the champagne-glass which she held to her lips. Her eyes were her greatest beauty,--large hazel eyes, but with no soul in them, no expression, not even a bad one. Her charm was entirely physical, but it was very great. It was a pity that her manners were so loud. That perpetual giggle of hers rasped Goswyn's nerves. But he was alone in his dislike: her adorers were legion.

He looked away from her. Where was his brother? Over in a corner, at a table without ladies, he was sitting with another gentleman. Fortunately he had found a man who was even more uncomfortable than himself in this brilliant assemblage.

This was Herr Geroldstein, husband of the ambitious dame, a pale little man with a bald head and mutton-chop whiskers, who looked for all the world like a man who had wielded a yard-stick behind a counter all his life long,--a decent enough little man, with an air of being perpetually ashamed of himself, who never made use for his own part of the title which he had purchased as a birthday-present for his wife. He spoke very softly and ate and drank but little, while Otto von Sydow did both with great gusto, now and then uttering some oracular remark as to the best wine-merchant in Rheims. His face was redder than usual, and produced the impression of rude health beside the pale tradesman who had passed his life in his office. There was in Goswyn's opinion no denying that no man in the room was as ill fitted to be the husband of the slender Princess Dorothea as was his brother Otto.

After supper there was a little music. When Goswyn was relieved from duty with Countess Lenzdorff, he was about to leave the house unnoticed, but longed for one more glimpse of Erika, whom he wished to remember as she looked to-night. "The dew will be brushed off so soon," he said to himself, adding, "Oh, the pity of it!" He could not find her anywhere. "Ah, of course she is surrounded somewhere by a crowd of detestable admirers!" he said to himself, and turned to go. Why he had thus decided that all her admirers were detestable we shall not attempt to explain.

The fourth and last in the suite of the 'wicked fairy's' reception-rooms was empty and dimly lighted. He suddenly seemed to hear low suppressed sobs, as he looked in. A red gleam of light played about the folds of a white gown behind a huge effective artificial palm. Involuntarily he advanced a step. There sat Erika, the youthful queen of beauty, whom he had supposed entirely absorbed in receiving the homage of her vassals, curled up in an arm-chair, her handkerchief to her eyes, crying like a tired child. Usually deliberate in thought and action, when once his nerves were irritated he became quick and impetuous. He did not hesitate a moment, but, bending over the girl, exclaimed, "Countess Erika! in heaven's name what is the matter? Can any one have offended you?" His voice grew angry at the bare suspicion.

"Ah, no, no!" she sobbed.

"Shall I go for your grandmother?"

"No--no!"

He paused an instant. Then, in a very low and kindly voice, he asked, "Do I annoy you? Would you rather be alone? Shall I go?"

She took the handkerchief from her eyes and assured him frankly and cordially, "Oh, no, certainly not: I am glad to have you stay with me," adding, rather shyly, "Pray sit down."

Nothing was left of the self-possessed young lady: here was only a little girl dissolved in tears and dreading lest she should seem impolite to a friend of her grandmother's.

"She treats me exactly like an old man," the young captain said to himself, at once touched and annoyed; nevertheless he accepted her invitation, and took a seat near her.

"It will soon be over," she said, trying to dry her tears. But they would not be dried; they welled forth afresh: she was evidently quite unnerved by the excitement of her début, poor thing!

"Oh, heavens," she cried, making a supreme effort to control herself, "I must stop crying! What a disgrace it would be if any of those people should see me!"

Apparently there was a great gulf in her mind between Goswyn and "those people." He was glad of it. For a while he was sympathetically silent, and then he said, kindly, "Countess Erika, would you rather keep your sorrow to yourself, or will you confide it to me?"

His mere presence had had a soothing effect; her tears ceased to flow; she only shivered slightly from time to time.

"Ah, it was not a sorrow," she explained,--"only a distress,--something like what I felt on the night when I first came to Berlin. It was not homesickness,--what have I to be homesick for?--but suddenly I felt so lonely among all those strangers who stared at me curiously but cared nothing for me. I seemed to feel a great chill around me: it all hurt me; their way of speaking, their way of looking down upon everything that was not as fine and proud as themselves, went to my heart. You--you cannot understand it, for you have grown up in the midst of it; you have breathed this air from your childhood."

"I think you do me injustice, Countess Erika," he interposed. "I can understand you perfectly, although I have grown up in the midst of it all."

"I felt as if I hated the people," she went on, her large melancholy eyes flashing angrily, "and then--then, amidst all this elegance and arrogance,"--she named these characteristics in a perfectly frank way, as if they were elements but lately introduced into her life,--"the thought came to me of the misery in which I grew up, and of all the little pleasures and surprises which my mother prepared for me in spite of our poverty,--ah, such poor little pleasures!--those people would laugh at the idea of any one's enjoying them,--but they were very much to me. Oh, if you knew how my mother used to look at me when she had contrived a new gown for me out of some old rag!--No one will ever look at me so again. And then"--she clinched the hand that held the poor wet handkerchief--"to think that my mother belonged of right to all this bright gay world, and to remember how she died, in what sordid distress, and that it is past,--that I can give her nothing of all that I have---- My heart seemed breaking." She paused, breathless.

"Poor Countess Erika!" he murmured, very gently. "It is one of the miseries of this life to remember our dead and to be powerless to be kind to them. All that we can do is to bestow as much love as we can upon the living."

"But whom have I to bestow my love upon?" Erika cried, with such an innocent insistence that, in spite of his pity, Goswyn could hardly suppress a smile. "I cannot offer it to my grandmother: she would not know what I meant, and would simply think me ill."

"But in fact," he said, now openly amused, "it is not to be supposed that you will all your life have only your grandmother to love."

"You mean that----" She looked at him in sudden dismay.

"I mean that--that----"

The sound of a ritornella drummed upon the piano suddenly fell on their ears, and then came the notes of a thin, clear, expressionless soprano.

His sister-in-law was singing. He listened breathless.

Just then Countess Lenzdorff with Frau von Norbin appeared. "Ah, here you are, Erika!" she exclaimed. "This I call pretty conduct. I have been looking for you everywhere. H'm! to run away from one's admirers, to be made love to by a young gentleman---- What do you say to it, Hedwig?" This last to Frau von Norbin.

"It was only Goswyn," the old lady replied, in her musical-box voice.

"Yes, that is an extenuating circumstance," Countess Anna admitted.

"And he did not make love to me," Erika assured them.

"Indeed? That I take ill of him," Countess Lenzdorff said, with a laugh, while Erika went on with sincere cordiality. "I suddenly felt so lonely and sad, and he was very, very kind to me!" She raised her eyes gratefully to his.

"Ah, well----but come now, child; we are going home. I have had quite enough of this.--Adieu, Goswyn."

"Perhaps you will permit me to take you home," said Goswyn.

"You had much better go in there and put a stop to the mischief which, if I am not mistaken, is being largely added to to-night." This with a significant glance towards the music-room.

"I am powerless," Goswyn observed, dryly. He conducted the ladies to the anteroom, where a regiment of lackeys were in waiting. After attending to the old ladies, he had the pleasure of helping Erika to put on her cloak. He had a strange sensation as he wrapped it about the girl's slender figure. The white fur with which it was trimmed was wonderfully becoming to her.

"A heather blossom in the snow," the vain grandmother remarked, with a glance in his direction, whereby she discovered that there was no necessity for calling his attention to her grand-daughter's charms. This discovery rejoiced her. She bade him good-night with unusual cordiality, smiling to herself as she descended the brilliantly-lighted staircase.

Meanwhile, Goswyn had returned to the music-room. His sister-in-law was still standing by the piano, singing. G---- was accompanying her, good-humouredly ready to burden his soul with any musical misdeed that could give pleasure to his audience, a readiness arising partly from the prosaic view which he took of his "trade," as he was wont to call his music. Quite a little throng of ladies had already rustled out of the room.

Countess Brock was beginning to be uneasy. The effect of the Princess's performance vividly reminded her of the effect which the young actor's reading had had upon her guests.

Goswyn glanced at his brother. Otto von Sydow was a picture of distress: he looked as if threatened with an apoplectic stroke; he alternately clinched and opened his gloved hands, looked uneasily at the men whom he saw laughing, and at the women whom he saw leaving the room; he stood first on one foot and then on the other; but he allowed his wife to go on singing.

The first verses of the music-hall song she had now selected were simply coarse. Goswyn comforted himself with thinking that perhaps she would not sing the last. He had underrated his sister-in-law's temerity. She went on. Sight and hearing seemed to fail him.

Suddenly there came a loud burst of applause. A few of the men present, in pity for the unhappy husband, had thus drowned the improprieties of the last verse.

Princess Dorothea looked round,--saw men laughing significantly and women hurriedly leaving the room. She grew pale, and there came into her Spanish face a look of indescribable hardness. She was about to continue, when her hostess approached her.

"Charming!" exclaimed the 'fairy,'--"charming, my dear Thea, but you must not exert yourself further: you are a little hoarse."

It was too unequivocal. Princess Dorothea understood. Her assumed gaiety took another turn. "I have a sudden longing for a dance!" she exclaimed. "G----, play us a waltz: we will extemporize a ball."

G---- began to play with immense spirit one of Strauss's waltzes, when a gray-haired old General raised his voice,--a clear, sharp voice,--and said, "It would be a little difficult to extemporize a ball, for, with the exception of the hostess, your Excellency is the only lady present."

Dorothea grew paler still, held herself rather more erect than usual, threw back her head, and smiled. Just thus, deadly pale, hard, erect and smiling, Goswyn was to see her once again in his life, a couple of years later, when all her world was pointing at her the finger of scorn.

"You will let me drive Helmy home, will you not, Otto?" Dorothea asked in the hall, where she was holding a kind of little court amid her admirers, a yellow lace scarf wound around her head, and a black velvet wrap about her shoulders. "Helmy has such a cold, and there is no finding a droschky at this hour."

Involuntarily Goswyn, who was just buckling on his sabre, paused to listen to this little speech of his fascinating sister-in-law's, uttered in the tenderest tone.

He had no idea that his brother had anything to fear from Prince Helmy: this was only Dorothea's way of escaping any admonition from her husband. If Otto did not scold on the spot he never scolded at all. There really was nothing objectionable in her driving home alone with her cousin, but then---- She laid her little hand on her husband's breast as she spoke: the gentlemen around her looked on. Without waiting to hear his brother's reply, Goswyn left the house. He had gone but two or three steps in the street when some one joined him: it was Otto.

"Have you a light?" he asked, in a rather uncertain voice. Goswyn struck a match for him, and paused in silence while his brother lighted his cigar with unnecessary effort.

"I am really very glad to walk," said Otto, keeping pace with his brother. "Thea cannot bear to have me smoke in the coupé."

Goswyn was silent.

"I know Thea through and through," Otto continued: "she is as innocent as a child, but a little imprudent; and then all those starched, stiff-necked Berlin women cannot forgive her for being more fascinating and original than the whole of them together. And, after all, what harm was there in her singing those songs? It was easy enough to see that she did not understand what she was singing, or at least did not think. The purest women are always the most imprudent. These people do not understand her. They admire her,--no one can help that,--but they do not appreciate her. When she saw that she was shocking those Philistines she sang on out of sheer bravado. It was perhaps not wise to brave public opinion."

Each time that Otto von Sydow had broken the thread of his discourse in hopes that Goswyn would assent to his view of the situation, he had been disappointed. His brother was persistently mute.

Otto's footsteps sounded louder, his breath came more heavily; Goswyn, who knew him thoroughly, saw that he was struggling against an access of rage. For a while he maintained a silence like his brother's; then, pausing, he addressed Goswyn directly: "Do you find anything to blame in my allowing my wife to drive home alone with a cousin who is not well, and who may thereby be saved a fit of illness,--a cousin, too, with whom her relations have always been those of a sister?"

Goswyn shrugged his shoulders. "Since you ask me, I must speak the truth," he replied. "On this particular evening I think it would have been wiser for you to drive home tête-à-tête with your wife than to let her go with young Nimbsch."

Otto's breathing became still more audible; he stamped his foot, and, before Goswyn could look round, had turned off into a side-street with a sullen "good-night."

He was greatly to be pitied: he had hoped that Goswyn would comfort him, but Goswyn had not comforted him.

"He never understood her, and therefore never liked her," he muttered between his teeth. "He is the worst Philistine of all."

And then he recalled Goswyn's persistent opposition to his marriage with the Princess Dorothea, how passionately--for Goswyn, calm as he seemed, could be passionate--he had entreated his brother not to propose to her. "A blind man could see how unfitted you are for each other: you will be each other's ruin!" he had said. The words rang in his ears now with vivid distinctness.

It was about two o'clock in the morning: the streets were dim, deserted. At intervals of a hundred steps the reddish lights of the street-lamps were reflected from the brown muddy surface of the asphalt. From time to time a carriage casting two bluish rays of light before it shot past Otto with an unnaturally loud rattle in the dull silence. The windows of the houses were all dark and quiet, except where from one open building came the muffled notes of some light popular airs: it was a cheap kind of music-hall. Involuntarily Sydow listened: something in the faint melody commanded his attention. They were playing the music of the very song his wife had sung but now.

His wretchedness was intolerable; his limbs seemed weighed down with fatigue. "Pshaw! it is this confounded thaw," he said to himself. In his ears rang the words, "You are utterly unfitted for each other." What if Goswyn had been right, after all?

Good God! No one could have resisted her.

They had met first in Florence. The two brothers had made a tour through Italy just after Otto's attaining his majority. They travelled together so far as that means having the same starting-point and the same goal, but each followed his own devices, stopping where he liked, so that sometimes they did not meet for a long while. While Goswyn underwent all kinds of inconveniences for the sake of visiting many interesting little towns in Northern Italy, Otto, whose first requirement was a good hotel, went directly from Venice to Florence. He had been there for five days, and was terribly bored; he missed Goswyn. Although Otto was the elder of the two, he had always been in the habit of letting Goswyn think for him. Old Countess Lenzdorff maintained that when they were children she had often heard him ask, "Goswyn, am I cold?" "Goswyn, am I hungry?"

He had carried with him through life a certain sense of dependence upon his younger brother, looking to him for help in every difficulty, for support in every sorrow.

He had no acquaintances in Florence, the food was not to his taste, the wine was poor, the beds, in which so many had slept before him, disgusted him, the theatres did not edify him. He took no pleasure in the opera; he was thoroughly--and for a German remarkably--devoid of a taste for music; and the Italian drama he did not understand. Consequently he found his evenings intolerably long: he spoke no Italian, and very little French. Since there were no Germans in the hotel save those with whom, in spite of his homesickness, he did not choose to consort, he led a very lonely life. And, as he took not the slightest interest in art, it was no wonder that on the fifth day of his sojourn in Florence he declared such an "Italian course of culture" the "veriest mockery of pleasure in which a Prussian country nobleman could indulge."

The queerest thing was that Goswyn seemed to be enjoying himself so much. He received delighted post-cards from him from all kinds of little out-of-the-way places of which Otto had never before even heard the names, not even when he studied geography at school, and he seemed entirely independent of discomfort as to his lodgings in his enjoyment of all that "art-stuff," as Otto expressed it to himself.

One afternoon in the cathedral, in an access of most depressing ennui, he was sauntering from one shrine to another, when he suddenly heard a sigh. He looked round. A young girl in a large Vandyke hat and a dark cloth dress trimmed with silver braid had just seated herself in one of the chairs, and was opening a yellow-covered novel. Everything about her, her hat, her dress, as well as her own striking figure, gave an impression of distinction, although of distinction somewhat down in the world.

She was very young, and yet did not seem at all affected by her loneliness. Before long she noticed that Otto was observing her, and she bestowed a scornful glance upon him over the pages of her book.

He instantly flushed crimson, and turned away, feeling very uncomfortable. Then in the twilight silence of the spacious church, always deserted at this hour of the day, he heard a delicate insinuating voice call, "Feistmantel, dear!"

Involuntarily he looked round: it was the slender girl in the chair who had called.

He then observed hurrying towards her a short, stout individual in a striped gray-and-black water-proof with an opera-glass in a strap,--a wonderful creature, whom he had noticed before strolling about the church, but without an idea that she had anything to do with the attractive occupant of the chair.

"Feistmantel, dear."

"Princess!"

"I am so hungry. Have you not seen enough of those stupid old relics?" And the girl yawned, sighed, and rubbed her eyes.

"Oh, pray, Princess!"

Both ladies then walked to the door of exit, where they paused dismayed.

It was raining in torrents, that steady downpour that gives no hope of any speedy cessation.

"This is intolerable!" exclaimed the young girl, in her insinuating and now melancholy voice, and with a slight imperfection of speech which struck kindly, awkward Sydow as something too charming ever to be forgotten. "Insufferable! We cannot put our skirts over our heads, like female pilgrims."

"Pray permit me to call a droschky for you." With these words the young Prussian approached the pair; then when the girl measured him from head to foot with a half-merry, half-haughty stare, he added, with a bow, by way of explanation, "Von Sydow."

The ladies bowed without finding it necessary to mention their names, and the younger said, with her bewitching voice and imperfection of speech, "You will greatly oblige us if you will be so kind as to take the trouble."

And in fact it was a trouble. It is difficult to withstand the insistence of Italian droschky-drivers in fine weather, when one wishes to walk, but to find a droschky in bad weather, when one wishes to drive, is more difficult still.

When he at last succeeded he feared to find that the ladies had left in despair at the delay; but no, there they were still, the companion in the striped waterproof with her face shining with the rain which had drenched it as she stretched her neck to see if he were coming, and her curls dangling limp in damp disorder; the girl more bewitching than ever, her cheeks slightly flushed by the fresh damp breeze, and evidently exhilarated in mind, flattered by her conquest. She had grown gracious, and she smiled her thanks, as she hurried into the carriage, lifting her skirts to avoid wetting them, and thereby displaying a pair of the prettiest little feet imaginable.

"What address shall I give to the coachman?" he asked, after helping the ladies to ensconce themselves in the vehicle.

"Hôtel Washington."

He had no umbrella; he was wet to the skin, and the day was cold. But that was of no consequence. Otto von Sydow had never felt so warm since he had been in Italy.

That very evening he moved to the Hôtel Washington from the Hôtel de la Paix. Since the entire first floor was occupied by a banker from Vienna, and the hotel was overcrowded, the room assigned him was far from comfortable; but he did not mind that.

And that very evening, before the table-d'hôte dinner, he found his fair one. She was in the reading-room, reading a Paris paper. He also learned who she was,--Princess Dorothea von Ilm.

She was an orphan, and very poor. The family, originally distinguished, had degenerated sadly, principally through the dissipated habits of the Princess's two brothers, notably through the marriage of the elder to a French circus-rider. Since her installation in Castle Egerstein the Princess Dorothea had been homeless, and had been wandering about the world with very little means and a companion who was half instructress, half maid.

This individual, whom Prince Ilm had hurriedly engaged for his sister through a newspaper advertisement, was named Alma Feistmantel, and came from Vienna, where she belonged to those æsthetic circles, the members of which interest themselves chiefly for artists and the drama. For ten years she had cherished a hopeless passion for Sonnenthal: her chief enthusiasms were for broad-shouldered men, Wagner's music, and novels which exalted "the sacred voice of nature."

Under the protection of this lady the Princess Dorothea had for three years been completing her education in Vienna, Rome, and Paris successively.

The Princess enlightened her admirer as to her affairs with the greatest candour, informing him that her brother had treated her shamefully, but that it was all the fault of the circus-rider, who could make him do just as she chose; and in spite of it all Willy was the most fascinating creature imaginable: he looked like a Spaniard. Sydow remembered him: he had served a year in the same regiment with him during his term of compulsory service.

With equal frankness Princess Dorothea explained that she was often embarrassed pecuniarily; once she had been so pinched that she had sold her dog to an Englishman for three hundred francs; she had hated to part with him, for she never had loved any creature as she did that dog, but she needed a ball-dress to wear at an entertainment in Rome at the German embassy. Her aunt, Princess Nimbsch, had chaperoned her when she went into society: sometimes she went, and sometimes she did not; it depended upon her circumstances. In fact, she did not care much about going into society, it prevented you from doing so many amusing things; you could not go to the little theatres, where the funniest farces were played. Therefore she preferred to be in Paris, where not a soul knew her, and she and Feistmantel could go everywhere together.

Feistmantel had frequently during these confessions admonished the Princess to greater discretion by a touch of her foot beneath the table: of one of these hints Sydow's boot had been the recipient. But when she found that she could thus make no impression upon her charge the Viennese interposed with some temper: "Pray, Baron Sydow, discount all this talk some fifty per cent. You must not believe that I would take any young girl intrusted to my care where it was not proper that she should go."

"I know nothing about proper or improper: I only know what is amusing and what is tiresome," the Princess said, with a laugh, "and we went everywhere. Feistmantel is putting on airs because of my exalted family, but do not you believe her, Herr von Sydow. We saw 'Ma Camarade,' and 'Niniche,' and we even went one evening to the Café des Ambassadeurs. Eh?" And she pinched her companion's ear.

"But, Baron Sydow, do not allow yourself to be imposed upon," Feistmantel exclaimed, almost beside herself. "The Café des Ambassadeurs,--why, that is a café chantant. There is not a word of truth in all her nonsense."

"Not true? oh, but it is," the Princess retorted, quite at her ease. "Of course it was a café chantant, and the singer sang 'Estelle, où est ta flanelle?'--it was too funny; but I can sing it just like her. I practised it that very evening. I must sing it to you some day, Herr von Sydow,--that is, when we are better acquainted. Oh, is there no café chantant in Florence to which you could take us?"

"But, Princess----!" exclaimed Feistmantel.

"Why, a gentleman took us to the Café des Ambassadeurs, a man whose acquaintance we made in the hotel," Dorothea ran on. "He was an American,--a Mr. Higgs: he came from Connecticut, and dealt in cheeses. He was very rich, and he sent us tickets for the theatre. Afterwards he wanted to marry me: I liked him very well, and would have accepted him, but my brother said he was no match for me. Well, I did not break my heart, but I should have liked to marry him for all that. We Princesses Ilm have the right, it is true, to marry crowned heads, but I never mean to avail myself of it. If I were an Empress I should always travel incognito. As soon as I am of age I shall marry a chimney-sweeper--if he is a millionaire, or if I fall in love with him."

"Both contingencies seem highly probable," Sydow observed, laughing. It was the only remark he allowed himself during the conversation,--a conversation which took place in the reading-room of the Washington Hotel on the first evening of his stay there.

After the Princess had finished her confessions, she went to the window, and looked out upon the Arno. For a while she was perfectly silent; but when Alma Feistmantel, recovering from her dismay, began to invent all sorts of falsehoods with which to impress Sydow, Dorothea quietly turned to him and said, "Herr von Sydow, will you not take a walk with us? Florence is so lovely at night!"

The next day he drove with the ladies to Fiesole. He sat on the front seat of a very uncomfortable droschky and felt as happy as a king.

It was the middle of April, and an upright crest of white and purple iris crowned the white wall bordering the crooked road leading to the famous old town. Here and there the rose-bushes trailed their blossoming branches in the dust. Barefooted Italian children, with dishevelled hair and glowing eyes tossed nosegays into the carriage and offered their straw wares to the ladies with persistent entreaties to buy. How many liri and fifty-centesimi pieces Sydow threw away on that wonderful day! The more he gave the rein to his liberality the longer grew the train of children, laughing, gesticulating, all pretty, with light in their eyes and flowers in their hands. Suddenly the driver shouted to some one who would not get out of the way. Sydow sprang out of the droschky and saw creeping along the dusty road a pair of wretched beggars, old and bent, their weary feet wrapped in rags. The sight of anything so miserable on the lovely spring day cut him to the heart. He could do no less than toss them some money.

Alma Feistmantel, as a member of the society for the suppression of mendicancy, lectured him for his lavish alms, and the Princess laughed at the beggars, whose misery struck her as comical. She flung a sneering "Baucis and Philemon!" after them. This shocked Sydow for an instant; the next he gave her a kindly glance, saying to himself, "Ah, she is but a child!" He was already incapable of finding any harm in her.

The next morning the German clerk of the hotel came to him, and, after some circumlocution, asked him if he were intimately acquainted with the Princess. Quite confused, and without a suspicion of the clerk's motive in asking, he explained that his acquaintance with her was of the most superficial kind. The clerk suppressed a smile beneath his bearded lip. Sydow was sorely tempted to knock him down, and was restrained only by regard for the Princess's reputation. It appeared, however, that the clerk's question was not the result of impertinent curiosity; he had no interest in the young Prussian's relations to the fair Princess, he only wished to discover whether Sydow knew anything of her family,--if she were a genuine Princess, and if they were people of wealth. She was travelling without a maid, and had not paid her hotel bill for a month.

Whereupon Sydow snubbed the clerk sharply, informing him that he need be under no anxiety, the Ilms were among the first families of Germany. The Princess had simply forgotten to pay, supposing it to be a matter of small importance. The clerk was profuse in apologies.

Sydow spent three hours considering how he should offer his aid to the Princess. At last--it was raining, and the ladies were at home--he knocked at their door.

"Who is it?" Feistmantel's harsh voice inquired.

"Sydow."

"Oh, pray come in," called the high voice of the Princess. He entered.

It was a small room in the third story. Feistmantel was sitting by the window, mending some article of dress; the Princess was sitting on her bed, reading "Autour du Mariage," by Gyp.

The Princess moved no farther than to offer him her hand with a charming smile; Feistmantel cleared off the articles from an arm-chair, that he might sit down.

"Oh, what a dreary day! I am so glad you are come! We are nearly bored to death," said Dorothea, rubbing her eyes, and gathering her feet under her so that she sat cross-legged on the bed. "Can you give me a cigarette? mine are all gone."

Feistmantel said something in disapproval of a lady's smoking, when Dorothea remarked, composedly, "Don't listen to her; she is putting on airs again because of my exalted family, when the fact is that it was from her that I learned to smoke. Oh, what a wretched world! 'Who but ducks and pumps can keep out of the dumps, in a world that is never dry?' Oh, I am so bored,--so bored!" She stretched herself slightly. "I should like at least to go to Doney's and get an ice, but we cannot; we have no money."

Then Sydow blurted out the little speech he had composed with infinite pains, coming to a stand-still three times during the recital.

He had heard that the ladies had been expecting remittances from Germany. Of course there was some mistake: would they permit him to relieve them--from--their temporary embarrassment?

He paused in great confusion. Would they turn him out of the room? No! The Princess simply held out her hands and exclaimed, "You are an angel! I could really embrace you!" which of course she did not do, but which she could have done without thinking much of it.

That same evening the Princess's bill was paid.

Two days later Goswyn arrived in Florence. He surprised his brother at dinner with Dorothea and Feistmantel at a small table at the extreme end of a long close dining-room, beside a window looking out upon the Arno.

The Princess was giggling and chatting in her clear high voice, which could be heard outside of the dining-hall; she wore a white dress, and a diamond ring sparkled upon her hand. At first Goswyn smiled at his brother's charming travelling acquaintances, but in a very little while the state of affairs made him grave. Of course he took his place at the table with the three. The Princess instantly began to flirt with him. First she congratulated herself that they were now a partie carrée; it was very jolly; until then Herr von Sydow had cut but a sorry figure between two ladies, now they could be taken for two couples on a wedding-tour. Then, planting both elbows upon the table, she leaned across to Goswyn and asked, "Which of the gentlemen will appropriate Feistmantel?"

"That is for the ladies to decide," Goswyn replied, laughing.

"Then my guardian spirit shall fall to your lot," said Dorothea, "for I prefer your brother. I perceived the instant that you appeared that you are a very disagreeable fellow, Herr Goswyn von Sydow," pronouncing the name with mock pathos,--"yes, a thoroughly disagreeable fellow. I could not live with you three days; while I could endure a lifetime with your brother. He is such an honest, clumsy bear: I have always had a liking for bears. Look, he gave me this ring as a keepsake: is it not pretty?"

Otto von Sydow long remembered the look which his brother gave the ring.

That evening the brothers had a violent dispute.

Goswyn admitted that the Princess was charming in spite of her wretched training and impossible behaviour; that there could not be a more amusing transient travelling acquaintance; that, finally, she certainly did come of very good stock, and was, in spite of her free and easy style of conversation, a pure-minded woman,--which should make it still more a matter of conscience with Otto not to compromise her as he was doing; for a marriage with her, even although her poor but haughty family could be brought to consent to the misalliance, was out of the question.

The result of this conversation was that Otto at last hung his head and admitted that his wiser, stronger brother was right; he promised to leave Florence with Goswyn the next morning; but when the trunks were all piled on the coach for their departure he met the Princess Dorothea on the stairs, and did not leave, but stayed and was betrothed to her.

It would be doing her injustice to say that she married him solely for his money. No, she really had a decided liking for "bears," and, as far as she could love any one, she loved her big, clumsy husband, just as she preferred brown bread and sour milk to all the delicacies of the table. During the honey-moon, which she spent with Otto upon his estate in Silesia, she developed an astonishing degree of tenderness, but she could not love anything for any length of time. Then, too, she was entirely unused to any regular life, and the dull routine at Kosnitz soon bored her to death. At first it delighted her to revel in her husband's wealth, to have dress after dress made, to adorn herself with all sorts of trinkets; but she soon found it tiresome and monotonous. Oh for a small room on the third floor of some hotel in Paris with Feistmantel, and poverty, and liberty, and a fresh conquest every day! how she longed for it all!

At first in Berlin, in honour of her husband, she had assumed the conventional air of a great lady; but of that she soon became desperately tired: it was the most wearisome of all the weariness in her new life.

In spite of all that evil tongues might say of her, she was as yet perfectly innocent: of that her husband was convinced.

"She is utterly unsusceptible,--utterly," he said to himself, as he tramped home through the mud and wet. And with this poor consolation he was obliged to be content.

But, slow-witted as he was, he was aware that women unsusceptible to temptation are apt to be equally unsusceptible to the disgrace of a fall. The matter is simply of no importance to them. Princess Dorothea would never be led astray through passion; but at the thought of the devouring, degrading ennui which was continually dragging her downward, Otto von Sydow shuddered.

Suddenly his cheeks burned; he could have boxed his own ears for such thoughts with regard to his wife.

CHAPTER VIII.

A few days after the wicked fairy's successful Thursday two fresh pieces of news were circulated in Berlin: one was that Goswyn von Sydow had fought another duel in his sister-in-law's behalf, and the other stated that Countess Lenzdorff had given the fashionable artist Riedel permission to paint her grand-daughter as "Heather Blossom." The truth as to the duel was never fully discovered. Goswyn von Sydow certainly appeared for a while with his arm in a sling, but, as he stoutly maintained that he had sprained his wrist in a fall from his horse, people were forced to be satisfied with this explanation. If some very sharp-sighted men added that in certain cases it was a man's duty to lie, no matter how strict might be his ideas of truth,--why, that was their affair.

As for the portrait, it was true that the old Countess had acceded to Riedel's request to be allowed to paint Erika as "Heather Blossom," of course not in the artist's studio, but in the Countess Lenzdorff's drawing-room, where Riedel worked away for a week, three hours daily, seated before a large easel, with colour-boxes beside him.

The result of his well-meant efforts was a commonplace affair, something between Ary Scheffer's Mignon and Gabriel Max's "Gretchen at her Wheel."

Naturally the Countess Lenzdorff was in no wise charmed by this picture, although in view of the ability of the artist in question she had not expected anything better.

"A 'Book of Beauty' painter, that Riedel," she said of him: "he flatters every one alike, and is blind to wrinkles, scars, and what he calls defects of all kinds. Such fellows as he are sure to be a success in the present day, when truth is at a discount. They never dissipate a single illusion, and the world--the world of society--delights in them."

She certainly took no pains not to dissipate illusions for the world to which she belonged: on the contrary, she delighted to destroy them, jeering coram publico at the beautifying salve which the model members of society as well as her favourite artists and literary men plastered over every peculiarity of humanity, and which in life passes for 'kindly criticism' and in art for 'idealistic conception.' She spent her time in tearing down the rose-coloured curtains from the windows of her acquaintances, and naturally her acquaintances did not like it; they loved their rose-coloured curtains, which excluded the pitiless garish daylight, admitting only a becoming twilight in which all the sharp edges and dark stains of life faded into indistinctness.

The Countess's rage for broad daylight seemed cruel to her acquaintances, while she in her turn called their love of twilight cowardly and when she alluded to the fashionable world usually designated it briefly as "Kapilavastu."

Erika asked her grandmother the meaning of this word. Upon which the old lady shrugged her shoulders and replied, "Kapilavastu is the name of the town in which Buddha grew up, the town where his parents hoped to shield him forever from the sight of old age, death, and disease!" Then, with a quiet laugh, she added, as if to herself, "Oh, what a world it is!"

All her life long she had sneered at the 'world of fashion,' which did not at all interfere with the fact that she would have greatly disliked being aught but 'a great lady.'

When Riedel had completed his picture of "Heather Blossom" to his own satisfaction, and enriched it with his valuable signature, he laid it as a tribute at the feet of the Countess Lenzdorff, begging permission to exhibit his masterpiece at Schulte's, 'unter den Linden.'

Permission was accorded him,--of course with the proviso that the name of the model should be strictly concealed.

Whether the picture were the 'sentimental daub' which the old Countess dubbed it, or the exquisite work of art which Riedel's numerous admirers pronounced it, certain it is that it attracted a great deal of attention,--so much, indeed, that the Countess Anna was one day seized with a desire to witness for herself the effect produced by it upon a gaping public.

It was a fair, sunshiny day in March when she walked to the end of the Thiergarten with Erika, slowly followed by her carriage. It was a pleasure to her to observe the undisguised admiration excited by her grand-daughter. And the girl was worthy of it. Tall, distinguished in air and bearing, faultlessly dressed in dark-gray cloth with a long boa of blue-fox fur and a black hat and feathers, she walked with an air and a bearing that a young queen might have envied.

"Every one looks after you, as if you were the Empress herself," said her grandmother, with a laugh, as she espied a young officer of dragoons, who with his hand at his cap saluted the grandmother but looked at the grand-daughter.

"Goswyn! this is lucky," she exclaimed, beckoning to him. "We are on our way to Schulte's to look at Erika's portrait. Will you come with us?"

"If you will let me," he replied. "But you will probably not see the portrait," he went on, smiling,--"only a great crowd of people. At least that was almost all I could see the last time I was there."

"Oh, you have been there?" said the old Countess, with a merry twinkle of her eye. "Then, of course, you do not care to go again."

"No, certainly not to see the picture; but you cannot get rid of me now, Countess."

Beneath the lindens on one side of the way stood a crippled boy with a huge hump, playing the accordion. The squeaking tones of the miserable instrument were but little in harmony with the splendour of the Thiergarten at this hour. A lady, as she passed the child, turned away with a shudder, and tears started in the boy's eyes and rolled down his pale, precocious face, as he retreated into still deeper shade.

Without interrupting what he was saying to the old Countess, Goswyn gave the boy some money. On a sudden Countess Lenzdorff noticed that Erika was not beside her. "Where is the child?" she exclaimed, looking round. Erika had fallen behind to stroke the little cripple's thin cheeks.

When she perceived that she was observed, she hastily left the child. Her own cheeks were flushed, and there were tears in her eyes.

"Why, Erika!" her grandmother cried out, in dismay, "what are you about?"

"I could not help it," the girl replied: "it was so hateful of that woman to show the boy her disgust at the sight of him." She could scarcely restrain her tears.

"But, Erika,"--her grandmother put her hand on the girl's arm, and spoke very gently,--"you might catch some disease."

"And if I did," Erika murmured, still under the influence of strong emotion, "I should not be half so wretched as that child. Why should I have everything and he nothing?"

To this no reply could be made; even the Countess's talent for repartee failed her, and the three walked on together silently. The Countess Anna glanced towards Goswyn. Never before had she seen him so gravely impressed; and on a sudden the despair that had possessed her in view of the unjust arrangement of human affairs was converted into pride and joy.

When they reached the picture-dealer's they found the portrait in an inner room, surrounded, in fact, by quite a crowd of people, although it was not great enough to satisfy the old Countess's pride: it could hardly have been that, indeed. Still, she did not express her disappointment in words, but ridiculed the assemblage.

The words 'Heather Blossom' were carved in the very effective frame of the portrait, and on one side could be traced a coronet.

"A beggar-girl and a coronet! nothing could appeal more strongly to these plebeians," the old lady exclaimed; and then she whispered to Erika, "Thank God, no one could recognize you from that daub, or we should have the whole rabble around us. What do you think of the picture, Goswyn?"

"Miserable," Goswyn replied, with a frown. "Between ourselves, I cannot understand your allowing the fellow to exhibit it."

"What could I do?" said the Countess, shrugging her shoulders: "he talked of the effect it would produce upon people generally, and in fact he seems to have been right. The Archduchess Geroldstein has already ordered her portrait of him. I cannot understand it. To me Riedel is absolutely uninteresting. If he has a really fine model he seems to lose even the power to flatter, upon which his reputation is chiefly based. Erika is ten times more beautiful than that picture."

This was Goswyn's opinion also, but he remained silent, asking himself whether it could be that the absent old Countess had actually forgotten her granddaughter's presence. Such, however, was not the case. It simply had never occurred to her to regard Erika's beauty as a secret to be confided to all the world except to the girl herself: she would as soon have thought of concealing from her the amount of her yearly income.

"I want you to look at a picture which has charmed me," Goswyn said, after a pause, desirous to change the subject, and as he spoke he pointed to a picture at sight of which the old lady uttered an exclamation of admiration, while Erika gazed at it pale and mute.

The picture was called 'The Seeress,' and represented a peasant-girl standing wan and rapt, her eyes gazing into the unseen, her hand stretched out as if groping. On the right of the girl were a couple of willows in the midst of the level landscape, their trunks rugged and scarred and here and there tufted with wild flowers, while in the background a little trickling stream was spanned by a huge stone bridge, through the arches of which could be seen glimpses of a miserable village half obscured by rising mists.

The Berlin public were too much spoiled by the mediocre artistic euphemism of the day to have the taste to appreciate this masterpiece. A couple of art critics passed it by with a shake of the head, muttering, "Unripe fruit."

Countess Lenzdorff repeated the phrase as the wise-acres disappeared. "Unripe fruit!--Quite right, but a most noble specimen. I only trust it may ripen under favourable conditions. The thing is full of talent. 'A Seeress.' Apparently a Jeanne d'Arc."

"Probably," said Goswyn. "It certainly is original in conception: there is nothing conventional in it. What inspiration there is in the pale face! what maidenly grace in the noble and yet almost emaciated figure! It is a most attractive picture."

"The strange thing about it is that this Seeress in reality looks far more like Erika than does Riedel's 'Heather Blossom,'" exclaimed the old lady. "I must have this picture!"

"You are too late, Countess," rejoined Goswyn.

"Is it sold already? What was the price?"

"It was very reasonable,--a beginner's price," Goswyn replied, with a slight blush.

The old Countess laughed: she had no objection that Goswyn, with his limited means, should buy a picture just because it resembled her grand-daughter.

Meanwhile, Erika was trembling in every limb. Who but he could have painted the picture?--who else had seen Luzano,--Luzano, and herself? She felt proud of her protégé. In the corner of the picture she read 'Lozoncyi.' It pleased her that he had so fine-sounding a foreign name.

"You shall find out for me where the young man lives," Countess Lenzdorff cried, eagerly: "he must paint Erika for me while his prices are still reasonable."

Goswyn cleared his throat. "Much as I admire this young artist," he observed, "if I were you I would not have him paint Countess Erika."

"Why not?"

"Because he has another picture on exhibition here, to see which an extra price of admission is asked."

"Indeed!" cried the old lady. "Is it so very bad?"

"The worst of it is the curtain that hides it from the public, and the extra price paid to look at it," Goswyn replied, half laughing. "It certainly is a powerful thing,--painted later than 'The Seeress,' and under a different inspiration. If you would like to see it, let me play the part of Countess Erika's chaperon for a few minutes: you go behind that curtain."

The Countess Anna could not let such an opportunity slip. She was an old woman; no one--not even the over-scrupulous Goswyn--could object to her looking at the picture. So she blithely went her way.

Meanwhile, Erika had grown very pale. She felt as if some dear old plaything, to which she had attached all sorts of pathetic memories, had fallen into the mire! It was gone; let it lie there: she would not stoop to pick it up and wipe it off.

Goswyn, who was observing her narrowly, could not understand the sudden change in her face. He had often had occasion to notice the sensitiveness of her moral nature, but to-day the key to the riddle was lacking. What could it possibly matter to her whether or not an obscure artist painted an improper picture?

He tried to begin a conversation with her, but had hardly done so when Countess Lenzdorff returned, walking slowly, with her head held haughtily erect, a sign with her of extreme indignation.

"You seem more shocked, Countess, than I expected you to be," Goswyn remarked, as she appeared. "Do you think the picture so very bad?"

"Nonsense!" the old lady replied, impatiently. "It was not painted for school-girls and boys: it did not shock me. It is not the picture that has made me angry, but--whom do you think I found in the room with her cousin Nimbsch and two or three other young men? Your sister-in-law Dorothea! So young a woman had better not look at a picture before which it is thought necessary to hang a curtain, but it is beyond a jest when she takes a train of young men with her to see it. If one is without principles,--good heavens! it is hard enough to hold on to principles in this philosophic age, when one is puzzled to know upon what to base them,--one ought at least to have some feeling of decency, some æsthetic sentiment."

CHAPTER IX.

For some time of late the loungers in Bellevue Street had enjoyed an interesting morning spectacle. Before the hotel the first story of which was occupied by Countess Anna Lenzdorff, three beautiful thoroughbred horses pawed the ground impatiently between the hours of eight and nine. A stable-boy in velveteens held two of the horses, while a groom in a tall hat and buckskin breeches reverently held the bridle of the third steed, which was provided with a lady's saddle. The groom was bow-legged and red-faced, very English in appearance,--in fact, an ideal groom.

Before long a young lady would appear at the tall door of the house, a young lady in a close-fitting dark-blue riding-habit and a tall silk hat beneath which the knot of her gleaming hair showed in almost too great luxuriance, and close behind her would come a fair-haired officer of dragoons. After stroking her steed and feeding it with sugar, the young lady would place her foot in the willing hand of her tall escort and lightly leap into the saddle. Then there would be a slight arrangement of skirt and stirrup, and "Is it all right, Countess Erika?"

"Yes, Herr von Sydow."

And in an instant the officer and his groom would mount and the little cavalcade would wend its way with clattering hoofs to the adjacent Thiergarten.