In the afternoon, also, the reception-rooms were open, for visitors were still coming with congratulations. The entire suite of these lower rooms, when opened, presented a charming coup-d'oeil. The warm air blew in through the gilt bronze tracery of the balcony, bearing on its wings the odour of the lindens in the avenue and of the opening flowers on the lawn; the golden May sunshine streamed through the high windows. In the crimson room alone it was powerless to awaken a single bright reflection. There all looked dark and cold as ever,—it seemed cruel to imprison all the lovely flowers upon the tables within those four dark walls.
Henriette reclined in a rocking-chair opposite the open door of the balcony. She would have liked to look as like the May as Kitty, and her emaciated figure was enveloped in clouds of white muslin; but she was cold, and had wrapped about her shoulders a soft white shawl of embroidered crape, over which her abundant hair fell in rich waves; it had never been coiled up since her last attack.
Thus lying motionless in the flickering sunlight, with her large dark-blue eyes wide open, shaded by their long dark lashes, and her snowy skin only near the temples tinged with faint carmine, she looked like a waxen doll. She had sent Kitty to the piano in the music-room, and was awaiting, with hands folded in her lap, the beginning of Schubert's "Lob der Thränen." Suddenly the faint flush near her temples deepened to rose, and her clasped hands involuntarily sought her heart—Doctor Bruck entered the drawing-room.
Flora flew towards him and hung upon his arm. She scarce gave him time to speak to the others, but drew him into her room to look at her birthday gifts. The beautiful woman who had endeavoured for so long to impress all with her learning and studious habits of research, to-day, on her twenty-ninth birthday, manifested the naïve grace of a girl of sixteen, and was indeed, with her lovely animated face and supple lithe movements, charmingly youthful.
Kitty stood by the music-stand, looking for the notes of the song, as the pair passed her on the way to Flora's room. She looked around for an instant, to receive Bruck's half-embarrassed bow, and then went on diligently with her search.
"Look, Leo, to-day I close with the past, wherein I erred so sadly and almost destroyed the happiness of my life," Flora said, in her irresistibly sweet voice, as Kitty took from the shelf a thick portfolio of music. "I would not recall the memory of that wretched evening, when I lost all self-control and, in my excitement and agitation, uttered words in which my heart and soul had no share; but, for the truth's sake, and because I owe it to myself, I must tell you that you too were wrong then in your adverse criticism of me. It was no desire for notoriety that drove me to authorship, but true talent,—to speak plainly, genius. Ask me no further! I can assure you I could have made my way by my work, 'Woman,' which you have never seen. According to the verdict of competent judges, it is indeed calculated to win me name and fame in the world; but how could I desire, by your side, to follow any path of my own, or to exercise any of my special gifts? No, Leo, I will bask solely in the light of your fame, as is fitting for a woman, and, in order that temptation may never in the future again assail me, these pages, the result of diligent study and of the fount of poesy in my soul, must vanish from the world."
Kitty, who had just found the notes she had been seeking, turned at this moment to take her place at the piano. She saw Flora hold a lighted match to her manuscript, and throw it, blazing, into the fire-place. The beautiful woman turned her head towards the window where the doctor was standing; perhaps she wished that he should make an attempt to hinder her from what she was doing; but no step was audible, no hand was extended to snatch the precious fuel from the flames. The smoke of the burning paper, borne on the wind of spring, floated into the music-room; and as Flora, biting her under lip, and with a strange gleam in her eyes, stepped back from the fire-place, Kitty took her seat at the piano and began Liszt's arrangement of the "Lob der Thränen."
Kitty would not listen to Bruck's reply; it was terrible to her to be perpetually an involuntary witness of these scenes between the betrothed pair; it would end in Bruck's hating her. But she was indignant at the farce she had again seen played. The battered manuscript, repeatedly pronounced to be worthless by competent critics, had been dragged out once more, to play the part of a tragic sacrifice made by a high-minded woman, who thus in submission to a stern lord and master renounced the genius which she was aware she possessed.
Through the melody that Kitty's fingers evoked from the piano the girl could hear a continuous murmur of sound, in which she distinguished the grave tone of the doctor's voice, although, to her great satisfaction, no distinct word was audible. As she concluded, Flora entered the room to pass through to the balconied apartment. She no longer hung upon Bruck's arm, but walked beside him with the princess's bouquet in her hand, looking like a child who has been reproved and dares not reply. Flora had found her master. She darted an angry glance towards her sister, whose hands were just lifted from the keys of the piano at the close of the piece. "Thank heaven, you have done, Kitty!" she said, standing still. "You bang away so that I can scarcely hear my own voice. You see, you play your own little things very fairly,—they are nursery airs, without any depth; but really you ought not to attempt Schubert or Liszt; you have neither sufficient taste nor execution."
"Henriette asked for that piece," Kitty calmly replied, as she closed the instrument. "I do not pretend to be a skilled musician——"