Flora was greatly vexed at all this, which she chose to regard as an infringement of her rights with regard to the doctor's aunt, but she was wise enough to suppress all evidence of her annoyance in the house by the river, since "the old woman took it so very ill if the tall girl with vulgar red cheeks and genuine Sommer features was not regarded as a perfect pattern-card of every imaginable virtue." The beautiful betrothed visited the house daily; she had had a dozen embroidered white aprons made, trimmed with lace, and never appeared without this domestic adornment, which became her admirably. No one could accuse her of not making every exertion to gain the approval of the doctor's aunt. She exposed her delicate face to the heat of the kitchen fire that she might learn how to bake cake; she took lessons in pickling and preserving, and once even took the flat-iron from the maid-servant's hand and herself ironed a table-napkin; but, in spite of these tremendous exertions, she never succeeded in inducing the dean's widow to depart in the smallest degree from the courteous but excessively reserved demeanour that she had adopted towards her nephew's betrothed ever since that most unlucky evening. She seemed to know perfectly well how, after these efforts, Flora would withdraw to her dressing-room as if fatigued to death, there to pull off her apron and toss it into a corner, and then usually to refresh herself by a round of visits in the carriage to her friends, whose ill-concealed envy was an inexhaustible source of satisfaction for her. These friends maintained unanimously that the university professor's future wife gave herself the airs of a full-plumaged peacock as she rolled along in her coupé, and that her arrogance was almost unbearable.
The sudden change in Doctor Bruck's career was still a nine-days' wonder. Many could hardly yet believe that the calumniated and depreciated young physician of a few weeks since now walked the streets of the capital an actual Hofrath. The man grew daily in the estimation of court and public; and, since his removal to L—— would in future make him unattainable, every sufferer was desirous of benefiting by his skill. Thus it happened that Doctor Bruck was actually overwhelmed with patients. His manuscript lay untouched upon his writing-table; he slept in his lodgings in town, taking his meals there usually, and thus declining to avail himself of the councillor's daily invitations to dine; any time spent at the villa or with his aunt had to be stolen, as he expressed it, from his patients.
Kitty saw him but seldom, and was all the more struck with the great change in him, probably in consequence of hard work, she thought. He looked pale and wearied; his former quiet but gentle reserve had become gloomy taciturnity. With Kitty he had scarcely interchanged two words since she had surprised his tête-à-tête with Flora in the hall, and his curt manner towards her had been such as to convince her that her inopportune appearance on that occasion had greatly angered him. It wounded her that it should be so, and she avoided him whenever she could.
In his conduct towards Flora, on the other hand, there was not the slightest change; he was the same grave, dignified person whom Kitty had seen the first time she had seen the betrothed pair together. Sometimes she half believed that the terrible scene by Henriette's bedside was either a freak of her own imagination, or else that Doctor Bruck possessed a power, common to no other mortal, of forgetting, of absolutely obliterating from his memory, disagreeable occurrences. Flora had evidently expected that her entreaty for forgiveness, her manifest repentance, would restore the intimate intercourse of the first weeks of their betrothal. Loving her so passionately as he did, must he not be intensely happy in knowing her now irrevocably his own again? Perhaps the happiness was there, only concealed for the present, and his beautiful betrothed might console herself by reflecting that a man of Bruck's stamp was not too easily appeased, that all would be as she would have it by September, the month now fixed for the marriage.
In the meanwhile, the twentieth of May, Flora's birthday, had come. Every table in her room was covered with flowers, the usual gifts of her friends. Even the princess had sent a magnificent bouquet to the betrothed of the Hofrath, whom she delighted to honour, and the most flattering congratulations poured in from various grandees of the court. Yes, it was a day of triumph for Flora; a day to strengthen her in the conviction that she was a favourite of the gods, one destined to an exceptionally brilliant career.
And yet there was a cloud upon her brow, and now and then she frowned darkly upon the table in the centre of the room. Among the gifts from her grandmother and her sisters stood a handsome mantel-clock of black marble. Doctor Bruck had sent it to her early in the morning, with an accompanying congratulatory note, excusing his non-appearance before the afternoon, on the ground of anxiety concerning a patient who was very ill.
"I cannot understand why Leo could find nothing prettier for me than that clumsy thing," she said, as she pointed to the clock, to the Frau President, who had taken the princess's bouquet from a vase and was smelling it eagerly, as if it must exhale a peculiar perfume. "No one likes to give a black birthday present; for my part, I consider it at least very bad taste."
"The clock is very suitable, chosen quite in accordance with your taste, Flora; it is intended to complete the decoration of this room," said Henriette. She was lying on the crimson couch, and, as she spoke, she glanced contemptuously at the black marble pedestals in the corners of the room.
"Nonsense! you know as well as I that I cannot take this furniture away with me. Moritz furnished this room entirely according to my desire, it is true, but so far as I know he has given me neither the furniture nor the hangings. And I would not take them away with me if he offered them to me,—one grows just as tired of a stereotyped style of furnishing as of a dress that has been often worn. What in the world shall I do with that black thing in L——, in my new boudoir that is furnished in lilac with bronze ornaments?"
"I, too, should have preferred a fresh bouquet; but you are not sentimental, Flora," Henriette remarked, not without a shade of malice. Kitty, dressed in white to-day for the first time, was standing beside a beautiful myrtle-bush which the dean's widow had reared herself and sent as her gift. The girl, with a sorrowful smile, passed her hand as if in a caress over its shining tender leaves. No one appreciated this beautiful present, which it must have cost the giver a pang to resign.