Flora hurried on as if the ground were burning beneath her feet, and Kitty silently followed her. In her young mind all was for the moment a wild tempest of confusion and uncertainty; the sound, healthy judgment she was wont to bring to bear upon men and things was obscured: she was tossing, rudderless, between right and wrong, truth and falsehood. Did not the beautiful creature beside her—the personification, as it were, of glaring wrong, arrogance, and cruel self-will—conduct herself with all the determination and complacent resolve of one to whom no other course lay open? Was not Flora trampling beneath her feet her plighted word, every consideration of truth and honour?
In the vestibule of the villa the servant informed the two sisters that the Frau President had visitors: two old friends had come to tea.
"So much the better," Flora said to Kitty. "I am really not in the mood to act Scheherazade for grandmamma to-night. Madame the general's wife always has her pocket full of gossip and news from town; so I can be spared."
She went in, as she said, to preside for half an hour at the tea-table, and then she retired to her room with her "surcharged heart." But Kitty excused herself on the plea of a headache. It seemed, indeed, as though what she had passed through were bringing illness to both head and heart.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
The next morning all were astir at Villa Baumgarten. Towards midnight a telegraphic despatch had announced the return of the councillor from Berlin, and an hour later he had arrived. He brought with him two business friends, commercial grandees, who were obliged to continue their journey in the afternoon, and for whom, to give them an opportunity of seeing several of their friends in the neighbouring capital, the councillor, before he slept, arranged a large breakfast for the next morning,—of course for gentlemen only. Cook and housekeeper had their hands full, and servants ran hither and thither noiselessly.
Kitty passed a sleepless night. The events of the previous day, and anxiety on Henriette's account, banished slumber from her eyelids. Sitting for hours at her window, she gazed out over the wind-tossed trees of the park, to distinguish, if possible, in the waning moonlight and through the falling rain, a glimpse of the white weathercock on the roof of the house by the stream; but the low dwelling had vanished, at it were, and all was quiet there, although Kitty hourly expected that some messenger sent thence would rouse the inmates of the villa with evil tidings.
From the other window she had seen the councillor arrive. In a twinkling, as if sprung from the ground, the villa servants had ranged themselves about the carriage with their lanterns; the yellow light illumined the white pillars of the porch, and sparkled and shone on the silver-mounted harness and the sleek coats of the horses,—nay, it was even powerful enough to bring into relief one or two of the marble figures in the shrubbery on the other side of the drive. It all looked most aristocratic. The councillor of commerce had sprang lightly from the carriage, in his rich, fur-lined travelling cloak, every motion of his lithe, youthfully-elastic figure proclaiming the man of wealth just grown wealthier still,—a gleaming comet, to whose sparkling track the glittering stream of gold was magnetically attracted. He had conducted his guests to their apartments, leaving the house himself, accompanied by a couple of lantern-bearing servants, towards two o'clock, to seek his rooms in the tower. Then all had gradually grown quiet in the villa; but the wind, whistling and shrieking about the house, still drove repose from Kitty's eyes. At daybreak, however, she fell asleep, to her great annoyance, for it made her late: instead of being in the house by the river at six o'clock, as she had intended, it was nine before she left the villa.
The morning was clear and beautiful. The tempest of wind had moderated to that soft southern breeze that brings upon its wings the fragrance of the first spring flowers, and caressingly but persistently seeks to draw the brown veil from the soft, shy buds. The birds were twittering upon the roof of the doctor's house, the boughs of the cherry-trees at one of its corners were sprinkled with the tender white of the opening blossoms, and the young grass could no longer hide from the light in the glorious morning sunshine. The former bleaching-ground was covered, as it were, with a misty green veil.
As Kitty crossed the bridge the waters were flowing clear and sunlit, almost peacefully, beneath its decaying wooden arches. Strange! The waves that last evening had received into their depths the rejected ring were far on their way towards the distant ocean; they alone could tell of the treacherous white hands that had burst asunder an oppressive chain.