XI
"Annette!" cried Gesa, one evening in the end of November, bursting breathless into the green sitting-room. "Annette! Father!"
"What is it, my boy?" asked Delileo.
"De Sterny has written to me. He is coming next week to Brussels."
"Oh!" said Annette, irritated and disappointed, "I certainly thought you had drawn the great lottery prize or had come to astonish us with an engagement at five thousand francs a month."
"Why! Annette!" cried Gesa.
"No wonder that you rejoice," said the tender and sympathetic Delileo, and seeing that Gesa kept his great tragic eyes fixed on Annette's face, with an expression of reproachful surprise, he added soothingly, "You must not take her indifference to heart, she does not know what 'de Sterny' is."
So Gesa spent that evening in explaining to his betrothed bride what de Sterny had been to him for the last ten years, and what the virtuoso's name meant to his grateful heart.