The young girl assented with a blush. "But it is true, also, that I knew nothing of my first appearance in public. I found my first printed opus upon my table with my birthday presents," she said, as she began to play.
It was a very simple melody that now fell upon the listeners' ears; but after the first few notes the players at the card-tables dropped their cards, so liquid and pure were the tones that filled the air, so touchingly were they rendered. The young composer sat there, her eyes earnestly riveted upon the notes, so calm and quiet that one could see the jet cross upon her breast rise and fall with each breath. Here was no brilliant execution, no crash of chords,—one hardly asked what style of performance it was,—there was no thought of the performance, any more than of the shape of a singer's mouth when an enchanting song is issuing from it; and when the melody ceased with a few low notes, breathed as it were from the instrument, there was a moment of breathless silence, as if all feared that any noise might scare the fleeting spirit of music. Then the drawing-room awoke to life. The gentlemen cried, "Brava!" "Charmante!" "Superbe!" and the ladies lamented that Herr Mangold was not alive to hear it. They were astonished and touched, and—took up their cards again.
"You must give me that charming fantasia, Fräulein Mangold: I will play it to the princess," said the maid of honour, with an air of patronage.
"And you shall have the finest 'concert grand' that can be found, Kitty!" the councillor added, with enthusiasm.
But Henriette caressingly laid her pale cheek against her sister's, and whispered, with tears in her eyes, "You gifted darling!"
At the first notes, Flora had retreated as if frightened away from the piano. She paced slowly to and fro in the red room, at each entrancing turn of the melody casting a half-scared glance at the performer, and, when the last tones died away, the restless white figure was no longer to be seen: it had probably withdrawn to the recess of a window.
"Ah, Flora seems to take it amiss that she is no longer the sole celebrity in the Mangold family," Fräulein von Giese whispered, maliciously, half to herself and half to the councillor.
The councillor smiled,—he always smiled when any one from the court addressed him,—but he forbore to reply.
"I am greatly provoked with your Frau Doctor for never telling us of your musical talent," he said to Kitty, who was just leaving the piano.
She laughed. "There is very little said about it at home," she replied, quietly. "The Frau Doctor is seldom profuse in words of praise; she knows how much I have to learn."