"A very sick man?" the councillor repeated, dubiously. He knitted his brows, and the lines about his mouth grew hard and pitiless. "Oh, yes; I know whom you mean,—that hair-brained fellow Lenz. The man has been speculating in the wildest way, and wants me to save him from ruin. No, I thank you."
"Will you not wait until we are alone to discuss it?" the doctor asked, with emphasis. "At present you and I are the poor man's only confidants with regard to his terrible situation; even his wife does not know of it——"
"Well, well, I will hear how far you are able to plead for him, but I hardly think I can hold out even a finger to save him. It is a hopeless affair, I tell you." He shrugged his shoulders. The sudden accumulation of wealth was fast making the really kind-hearted man hard and cruel; he found it quite impossible to sympathize with a fellow-mortal beset by torturing cares. "You, of all men, should be the last to say a word for him,—he was one of the most violent of your accusers."
"Ought that really to influence me?" Bruck asked, gravely, as he prepared to accompany the councillor into an adjoining room. The man of science looked at this moment immeasurably the superior of the mere moneyed man beside him.
The three sisters were left alone. Flora rang for her maid to take away the councillor's gifts, and Kitty took up her parasol.
"Are you going out, Kitty?" asked Henriette, who was again seated in her rocking-chair.
"To-day is a class-day at the Frau Dean's; I am late, and must hurry——" The young girl paused involuntarily,—Flora's face had grown so dark and angry.
"I cannot express how your conduct disgusts me," Flora said, peevishly. "The dean's widow, personification that she is of duty, stern duty, declined my invitation to coffee to-day because those wretched little things from the lowest quarter of the town could not on any account be sent away without their instruction; and Kitty sets off to second her efforts, with an air of the most righteous devotion to the welfare of humanity."
She bit her lips, and waited until the maid had left the room, when she turned and laid a detaining hand on Kitty's arm. "Patience for a moment! Let me tell you that your conduct forces me to play a part insufferably wearisome to me. September is still far off. Of course the dean's widow expects her nephew's betrothed to exercise the same heroic self-sacrifice practised by her model sister. I am to take those children's dirty fingers in mine and patiently initiate them stitch by stitch into the mysteries of knitting and netting. I am to wash their faces, comb their hair, and play games with the little wretches by the hour. I have tried it; ugh! And if I fail to do it, his aunt's complaints stamp me in Bruck's eyes as a kind of monster, an unwomanly, heartless creature, who does not love children. For this reason, in view of my rights in the matter, I forbid now and in future this kind of intercourse on your part in the house of my future husband. Do you hear?"
"I hear, but I shall nevertheless continue to follow the dictates of my own conscience," Kitty replied, calmly, freeing her arm from her sister's grasp. "Your rights which you once scorned, and in my presence declared yourself weary of——"