"Then it is you who represent the trifling circumstance in an entirely false light."
"Ah, take care, take care, child! The passion so long suppressed gleams in your eyes," Flora exclaimed, and, although she smiled coldly, her foot tapped the floor impatiently. "I am false, then? Not he, when he boasts of his conquest?"
Again the colour left Kitty's cheek as she firmly shook her head. "No! Although you should repeat that to me a thousand times, I would not believe it! I would sooner doubt all that I have been taught to believe in as good and true! He—even think a falsehood? He, like some brainless fop, boast of a conquest? He, who——" She paused, as if terrified at the passionate tone of her own voice. "You calumniated him vilely when I first came home," she added, controlling herself. "Then I could not answer you, although instinctively I espoused his cause; but now that I know him I will not have a word breathed against him. It is monstrous that I must say this to you. How can you find it in your heart,—how dare you persist in attainting the honour of the man whose name you will shortly bear?"
As she uttered these last words Flora turned and gazed at her incredulously, as if doubting the evidence of her senses. "Either you are a most finished actress or—a declaration of love must be handed to you in black and white before you can understand it. You really know nothing of it?" With an impertinent smile, she laid her hands upon Kitty's shoulders and gazed keenly into the clear brown eyes. Then thrusting her from her, she exclaimed, "Pshaw! What more do I need? Have you not just fought for him as if you were willing to spend your last breath in his defence?"
Kitty turned towards the door. "I cannot see why you detained me here," she said.
"Ah! was I too figurative, then? Must it be said plainly in good German? Well, then, my dear, I wish nothing more or less than to know what has passed between Bruck and yourself yesterday and to-day."
"What passed between us," Kitty replied, "you may readily learn word for word. He took great pains, and I made his task very hard, to destroy my blind reliance upon some future improvement in Henriette's condition; he took pains to prepare me"—her voice trembled and tears glistened in her eyes—"for her departure."
Flora, in evident confusion, walked away to the window. With all her idolatry of self, the suspicion faintly dawned upon her that she played but a poor part in contrast to these two people. "Child, you must have long known of that," she said, in a subdued tone. "And have you not felt that we all ought to pray that the poor sufferer might be released from the burden of pain she has borne so long?" She approached the girl once more. "And was that really all that was said, word for word?"
A feeling of unutterable scorn awoke in Kitty's mind This, she thought, was the jealousy, not of a loving woman, but of a vain one, who would watch her lover stealthily, and control, if she might, every word that he spoke. "Do you suppose that in an hour when he lends support and consolation to the dying, Doctor Bruck has either mind or heart for aught else," she asked, with grave reproof in her tone, "and when, besides, in the sufferer to whom he ministers he loses the dearest friend he has upon earth?"
"Yes, she loved him," Flora said, coldly.