"A very sensitive conscience, my dear; it tells me that it would be most culpable frivolity to throw myself away. You remember your Bible well enough to know that we are each and all answerable for the employment of our talent. Look at me, and ask yourself if it is my rô1e to play the Frau Doctor and devote my time to housekeeping. And for whom?" She nodded her head towards the drawing-room, where the conversation was just then rather lively: old Colonel von Giese's arrival had inspired the guests with some animation. Doctor Bruck, however, was sitting alone by the tea-table, looking over a newspaper,—he was apparently absorbed by it, and had hardly looked up upon Henriette's return to his side.
"Do you see any of the gentlemen talking with him?" Flora asked, in a suppressed tone. "He is ostracized, and with justice. He has deceived me and the world. His brilliant reputation was the merest tinsel."
She broke off, and retired to her room, obviously to avoid the talkative old colonel, who now entered the music-room with his daughter and the councillor to beg for an introduction to Kitty. At his request, the young girl seated herself again at the instrument and played. Strange! As she lifted her eyes from the notes, she found her brother-in law watching her with an intense and indescribable expression, not at all like the brotherly air with which he gave her, as a child, a box of bonbons, or with which he had but yesterday brought her a bouquet from town. She willingly resigned her hand to him when he took it in conversation, and often permitted him to stroke her hair caressingly from her brow,—he did it much as her father had been used to do it; and now, when she had finished playing, and amid the enthusiastic applause that followed, he came hastily to her side and laid his hand upon her shoulder.
"Kitty, what a change is this!" he whispered, bending over her. "It is Clotilde, your sister, but infinitely more beautiful, more richly gifted!"
She put up her hand to remove his from her shoulder; but Moritz possessed himself of it, and held it as if in a life-long grasp. For the others it was only a pretty, innocent picture: the guardian was proudly caressing his ward,—the child entrusted to his care by his father-in-law. Henriette's pale face alone flushed crimson; she smiled oddly. Doctor Bruck, standing beside her, looked at his watch, then quietly gave Henriette his hand, and took advantage of the general commotion to withdraw unobserved.
[CHAPTER X.]
A week had passed since the last reception-evening: "a terribly fatiguing week!" the Frau President sighed, in a tone of exhaustion, which did not, however, prevent her from immediately afterwards finding a great deal of fault with her modiste for not arranging with sufficient taste the toilette in which she was to appear on the eighth of these fatiguing evenings. The train was not long enough; the lace not broad enough; and the silk not so heavy as was desirable. There had been several large festivities in aristocratic circles, and, in addition, Flora had been requested to compose and recite verses at some tableaux vivants arranged at a small fête at court. "There was hardly time to breathe."
Henriette, in consequence of her invalid condition, could take no part in these exciting entertainments, and Kitty remained at home with her, although she was always included in the invitations to the family. They drank tea alone together in the music-room, and Kitty was unwearied in her efforts to dissipate Henriette's melancholy, by lively talk, and music. Keen as was the invalid's power of discrimination, impressed as she was by the superficiality and unreality of a life given up to society, she was, and always must be, a child of the world of fashion; she had grown up in the drawing-room of her aristocratic grandmother, and often, when the sound of rolling carriages bound for ball or opera was heard in the distance, she would smile bitterly, and liken herself to a broken-down war-horse, weak and lame, who nevertheless at the blast of the trumpet pricks his ears and longs for the strife.
Lovely as a fairy, Flora would glide through the music-room before her departure. There was almost always a frown upon her brow and a sneer upon her lip at sight of her grandmother's youthful toilette; she would lament the loss of precious time as, throwing a lace veil over her flower-wreathed curls and gathering up her train, she passed on to the carriage which was to bear the "victim to the sacrifice."
The councillor had been absent in Berlin, attending to business affairs, for six days. He wrote every day to the Frau President, and seemed "intoxicated with money-making," she remarked, with a significant smile. Four days after his departure, however, there arrived from him for his sisters-in-law three magnificent bouquets, at which the Frau President did not smile. The gallant brother-in-law had ordered camellias and violets for Flora and Henriette, whilst Kitty's bouquet was composed almost entirely of myrtle and orange-blossoms. This tender message from a distance might have escaped the Frau President's observation; she took the flowers from the box in which they were packed, and was about to send up to Henriette's room those destined for the two girls, when Flora, with a laugh, called her attention to the expressive arrangement of Kitty's flowers. The old lady's face lengthened as she looked. "But, grandmamma, did you really suppose that Moritz would purchase rank at such an immense price and then allow his race to die out?" Flora exclaimed, in her arrogant, frivolous manner. "You ought to have known that such a man as he—still young and rich and handsome—would not remain a widower all his life. And he will not woo Kitty in vain,—I am well assured of that."