"Here you have Moritz's Tusculum, Kitty," said Henriette, who was leaning upon her sister's arm. "Once a castle-keep, with its paraphernalia of instruments of torture and sighs of mortal agony; only four months ago an undisputed refuge for owls, bats, and my doves; and now drawing-room, bedroom, and even treasure-chamber, of the Herr Councillor von Römer. In truth, the place still looks ruinous enough, almost as if the next strong wind would overthrow the walls, but all is really strong and firm; and there, beneath those projecting stones, Moritz's servant has his room; the fellow is to be envied."
Flora had come with them. "No accounting for tastes!" she said, drily, with a shrug. "Really a striking and original idea for a plebeian brain, eh, Kitty?" She passed her sisters and crossed the bridge. A touch of her little foot thrust away the dog from her path, and she ascended the hill. The roes fled timidly from her rustling silken robes, the doves flew away from the lower window-sills, and the dog growled, and slowly followed the lordly lady for a few steps. Standing above, her slender hands upon the latch of the brazen-studded door of the tower, and dressed in heavy light-gray silk, gleaming like silver in the sunlight, with puffed sleeves and skirt caught up on one side, she was the living impersonation of the beautiful emperor's daughter of the Kyffhäuser.
Involuntarily Kitty looked from her to Henriette, clinging to her arm, and her heart ached. The frail figure, its emaciation showing plainly in the close-fitting gay-coloured dress, was actually balanced upon immensely high heels. Her breath came in short gasps; but her whole costume was gaudy, and had so coquettish an air that but for pity one could have laughed. Within the last few days she had had repeated attacks of asthma, almost to suffocation, and yet she would not be ill: the world should not know that she suffered. A single compassionate glance, any pitying remark, made her angry and bitter. She had been more ill than usual; for Doctor Bruck, whose patient she was, and who could always give her relief, was away. A few hours after leaving the villa upon Kitty's arrival there, he had received a telegraphic dispatch from a friend calling him to L——g, to remain there for several days, he informed Flora in a short note. Any medical aid from Doctor von Bär the sick girl persistently refused to accept. "Rather die!" she had whispered, when struggling with one of her attacks. Kitty had tended her sister with the greatest care, and now, putting her arm around her waist, she led her across the bridge towards the ruin.
How often as a child she had run up that hill and scrambled through the underbrush! How often she had peeped through the big key-hole of the door of the tower! The servants had said that in its cellars there was still stored powder from the Thirty Years' War, and that the walls were hung with "all sorts of horrid things." But she had never seen anything within but black darkness. A heavy, mouldy air had been wafted out upon her childish face with terrifying effect; and if an owl above happened to flap his wings, she would rush down the hill as if pursued by the furies, and cling with both hands to Susie's apron, quaking with fright. Now she stood inside, at the foot of a narrow, carpeted winding staircase, and admired the effect produced by the wealthy merchant's money. Without, a crumbling ruin; within, the home of knightly ease. The room her childish eye had never been able to pierce was a spacious vaulted hall, the massive arches of which supported the entire structure above. On the walls the "horrid things" were still hanging,—helmets and various weapons,—but they were tastefully arranged, and flashed back from their burnished surfaces the sunlight that streamed through the windows. To preserve the ruinous aspect from without, there was no division into panes of the glass in the windows; one unbroken sheet had been set into the stone frames, hence the strange glitter in them when seen from the outside. The place had been what was called in the olden time a fortress ward; in times of supreme danger, a place of refuge for the dwellers in the castle. As such, its upper story had been furnished after the most primitive fashion; now, its splendour far eclipsed that of the finest ancient banqueting-hall of the old castle, so long since swept from the face of the earth. When the two sisters reached the first room of the upper story they found Flora gracefully reclining among the crimson cushions of a lounge, with a lighted cigarette between her fingers, looking on while the councillor brewed the afternoon coffee in the silver coffee-pot. He had invited his three sisters-in-law to take coffee with him this afternoon.
"Well, Kitty?" he called out to the young girl upon her entrance, directing her attention by a wave of his hand, as he spoke, to all that he had effected.
She paused upon the threshold, a black veil thrown loosely over her golden-brown braids, her eyes full of laughter, her young frame vigorous and supple as if sprung from the giant knights Von Baumgarten.
"Most romantic, Moritz! The illusion is perfect!" she answered, gaily. "That fellow down there," and she pointed through the nearest window to the gleaming girdle of water, "might terrify us with his martial air, did we not know that a councillor of commerce of the nineteenth century sits within his circle."
He contracted his fine eyebrows, and cast from beneath them a dubious glance at her face. She did not notice it. "It certainly was hardly fair to grow turnips and cabbages in the bed of the fosse," she continued. "I see that now, although the 'little valley' was a favoured spot in my remembrance. Still, it is a strange and interesting fact, that the merchant of to-day renews the barriers which even former knightly lords of the soil wearied of and at last destroyed as superfluous."
"Do not forget, my dear Kitty, that I myself now belong among these latter," he replied, in a tone of considerable pique. "It is sad to think that an ancient race should so adapt itself to the spirit of the age as ruthlessly to abolish old and honourable customs and institutions. It is a crying outrage upon us, their successors."
"Idiot! He is more Catholic than the Pope," Henriette muttered, angrily. She advanced farther into the room, while Kitty mechanically closed the door behind her without averting her half-startled, half-thoughtful gaze from her brother-in-law. As a child she had, in common with all who came in contact with him, been very fond of him. His father had been an honest, hard-working mechanic, and Moritz, left an orphan at an early age, of striking personal beauty and ingratiating address, had been received as an underling in the establishment of the wealthy banker Mangold, whose daughter he eventually married. Kitty knew how devoted he had been to her sister Clotilde until she died; she had always seen him submissive even to servility to her father, and he had been uniformly amiable and kind even towards those beneath him; and yet there was now hovering about those finely-chiselled lips a distinctly-stamped expression of arrogance. The ropemaker's son was contemptuously overthrowing the ladder by which he had climbed thus high, and was so dazzled by his good fortune that he fell naturally into the jargon of a genuine country squire.