"Forget!" Helena repeated, as she sank down in the other corner of the sofa. "Forget you! That would be inexcusable, after all that you did for her. No; she is a good, grateful little thing. She has talked of you every day."
These were strange words from the lips of this woman. Lisbeth solved the riddle. "Yes, my dear, good old darling, I talked of you all the time; I wanted to come to you, and now I am not going away again. Mamma says that she and Uncle Carlo do not need me now, and will leave me with you."
Helena looked embarrassed. "How naughty, Lisbeth!" she cried. "And why do you say 'Uncle Carlo'? He is papa."
The child sat upright in Johanna's lap. "But he is not my papa," she said, waywardly. "Is he, Johanna?"
"Be quiet, you little mouse," Carlo Batti interposed, having drawn up a chair beside Johanna and seated himself in it. "Dear Helena, do not tease her; we can be just as good friends if she calls me Uncle Carlo." And turning to Johanna, he continued: "Permit me to repeat my question, 'Of whom did you learn to ride?' Here are not only strength, security, elegance, but also, if I do not mistake, a grand method——"
"Which I owe partly to my grandfather and partly to old Martin, his groom," was Johanna's smiling reply.
"Genius, then! pure genius!" cried Carlo Batti, and his bronze face flushed and his eager brown eyes sparkled. "I'll tell you what! Come to us; put yourself in my hands, and, by Jove! I'll promise that in a year you shall be as famous as—as——"
"Don't trouble yourself, dear Carlo," said Helena. "Johanna, as you know, is about to marry a Herr von Dönninghausen."
"To be sure; I had forgotten. These infernal grand matches!" he exclaimed, with a comical expression of despair. "You might search the length and breadth of the country and not find such a talent as yours. And you think of marriage, an irksome marriage! No, no! come to us. Just try it!" And he seized Johanna's hand in a clasp from which it cost her repeated efforts to withdraw it, and went on with enthusiasm: "I need not tell you what it is to have under perfect control a horse,—a strong, proud, noble creature; but you do not yet know what it is to feel a thousand eyes riveted upon you in admiration, to hear a thousand voices shouting applause. Try it; let me adjure you, try it! and I'll be d—d if you do not say Carlo Batti is right—'the world belongs to the artist, and it shall belong to me!' It belongs even more to a woman than to one of us, especially when she looks like——" He laughed, and his glance completed his sentence. "I cannot understand, Helena, how you could tell me that Fräulein Johanna was not beautiful. A brilliant apparition for the ring,—entirely too brilliant. It would outshine all others."
Johanna laughed; the man's coarse admiration was expressed with such good-humoured simplicity that she could not resent it.