The words came out sharply, and she went on: "You have judged rightly, the Prankens are a presumptuous and daring race. It was believed that Bella would marry her music-master, with whom she played a great deal; indeed she played with him in a double sense. But that's not to the purpose. An apparently insignificant event brought about in Bella a derangement—I don't know what to call it—a sort of overturn in her character. In her youth, while she might still be considered young,—she was twenty-two or twenty-three—she had to see her younger sister married before her; she bore it with the greatest composure, but I think that, from that time, a change came over her difficult to be described; she had suddenly grown old, older than she would confess to herself; there was something of the matron about her. This was affected, but a bitter tone was real. Her sister died after a few years, leaving no children. All these circumstances brought out something discordant in Bella; she really hated her sister, and yet behaved as if she were pining for her. She had no mother, or rather, she had one whose highest triumph was to hear people say, 'Your daughter is handsome, but not nearly so handsome as you were when you were a girl.' To be handsome is the chief pride of the Prankens. Bella is unfortunately a development of that unhappy class of society, in which people go to the theatre only to satirize and ridicule the performance, to church only to make a formal reverence to the mercy of God; in which women are held in low esteem unless they are handsome, and know how, as age comes on, to intrigue, and to affect piety. Such a being can say to herself: I have in the course of my life adorned with flowers eight or ten hundred yards of canvas, for perfectly useless sofa-cushions. Is that a life worth living? Now she has no children, no natural fixed duties—"
"And just for these reasons," interrupted Eric, "Aunt Claudine, without knowing it, will have a softening and tranquillizing influence; her calm nature, which never has to renounce, because it never longs for any change, seems just chosen for the work. However highly I value Frau Bella, our friend's wife, for herself, we must think first of all that we are fulfilling a duty to the noble Clodwig; it will establish anew and increase the purity and beauty of his life."
"Well, Aunt Claudine is going to Wolfsgarten; and now leave me, my dear son,—but no, I must tell you something, though it may seem childish. When I saw you running so fast through the garden to-day, I thought of your father's pleasure when he had been on a mountain excursion with you; and once, when you were just eleven, when you had been in Switzerland with him, he said on coming home, that his chief delight had been in seeing you run up and down the mountains without once slipping; and you never did get a fall, though your younger brother was never without some bump or bruise."
It was with a glance of double meaning that she looked at Eric, as she passed her hand over his face.
"But we have talked enough; now go. I must dress for dinner."
She kissed his forehead, and he left her; but outside the door, he stopped and said, with folded hands:—
"I thank you. Eternal Powers, that you have left me my mother: she will save us all."
CHAPTER VII.
STATISTICS OF LOVE.
When they assembled again at the villa, the Doctor chanced to be there. Or was it not mere chance? Did he desire to note accurately, once for all, the relation between Eric and Bella?