“About nine hundred pounds of your money without which no officer can obtain leave to marry. It is considered a sort of provision for his wife and children in case of his death, and is, probably, a very wise regulation, but is also sometimes a source of great vexation. I am by it completely placed in my father’s power, for although I receive from him at present, in addition to my pay, ten times as much as the interest of the necessary sum, and though I know at his death I shall have more than a comfortable maintenance, yet as Hildegarde has no fortune, and I am not independent, our marriage is at present utterly impossible!”
“I advise you at all events to speak to your father.”
“I shall carefully avoid such a communication. Why, I cannot even hope for my mother’s assistance, as the connection would be in every respect disagreeable to her. I have but one hope. Through my sister’s influence something may be done; she is a good child, and about to marry to please papa and mamma; first of all, however, I must speak to Hildegarde herself.”
“There you have every thing to hope, for she is absolutely civil to you sometimes! You will probably enter into some interesting secret engagement?”
“That would be worse than folly. I could not be so ungenerous as to ask her to refuse, perhaps, an eligible establishment, should one offer, on the chance that I should marry her, should I live to become a second edition of Major Stultz! Suppose I wait ten years, Hildegarde’s and my ideas would both be changed. I do not feel quite sure that at the end of that time I might not prefer some gentle, simple Crescenz, who would overlook my age and ugliness provided I made her handsome presents, and supplied her liberally with bon-bons. I wish you had seen her face of delight just before I came here, when Major Stultz gave her a box of bon-bons, which evidently had been ordered from Munich expressly for her, as it contained nothing but sugar hearts and darts, and kisses wrapped up in pink and blue papers, and doves billing, while almost bursting with the liquor with which they had been ingeniously filled by the confectioner!”
“So! Now I know why the little coquette did not come to meet me! After having called me to account for my neglect so innocently, and talking such mysterious nonsense about her first love, she amuses herself eating sugar-plums, and sends her sister to me now. These German girls are inexplicable; one cannot talk to them without quarrelling, or being entangled in a labyrinth of sentimentality.”
“You must not judge of all from your slight acquaintance with two,” observed Zedwitz, laughing. “You may say what you please, but you cannot deny that they are fine specimens of the species.”
“Hildegarde is undoubtedly handsome, but then she is only amiable towards you,” said Hamilton, leaning against the side of one of the arches. “I believe,” he continued, after a pause, “I believe I am getting very tired of Seon, and were I not engaged to these Rosenbergs, I should start at once for Vienna. Suppose we make a tour in the Tyrol together?”
Zedwitz looked embarrassed, and said, with some hesitation, “I—a—am—half engaged to join the Rosenbergs in a party to an alp, and afterwards to Salzburg.”
“What! and I have never heard a word about it?”