At this obstinate and unjustifiable incredulity the councillor fairly forgot the courteous forbearance and self-control he was wont to exercise in his intercourse with the ladies of his household. He stamped his foot angrily and turned away.
The Frau President stood by the table, her white, wrinkled fingers playing nervously upon its surface, her eyes fixed anxiously upon her grandchild. She entirely understood what she must feel upon hearing thus extolled the man whom she had so shamefully depreciated and slandered. It was a lamentable defeat; but these were moments in which a true woman of the world was bound to assert her supremacy.
"You cannot help yourself, Flora," she said, calmly; "you will have to believe it at last. For my part, strange as it is, I doubt no longer. The Duke of D—— is uncle on the mother's side to the crown-prince; of course he is rejoiced at his nephew's recovery, for yesterday evening I saw the order of the D—— royal household lying upon Bruck's writing-table."
"And you tell me this now for the first time, grandmamma?" Flora almost screamed. "Why was I not told yesterday? Why have you kept it from me?"
"Kept it from you?" the Frau President repeated, so indignantly that her head shook with the tremulousness that frequently attacks the old when angry. "What impertinence! What, I should like to know, could induce me to keep such a matter to myself, except the fact that during the last few months you have resented the mention of Bruck's name in your presence? I have certainly avoided it——"
"Because my views on the subject were quite in accordance with your own, chère grand'mère."
"Not at all; but because my whole soul revolts at outbursts of passion. You have been his bitterest opponent; you have judged him more harshly than the severest of his colleagues: the slightest attempt to excuse him always provoked a scene. Poor Henriette and Moritz can tell a tale upon that subject. And have you not this very moment shown how any favourable intelligence with regard to him is received by you?" She must have been agitated indeed so far to forget her almost invariable rule of silence upon disagreeable topics as thus to pass in review before others Flora's misconduct.
Flora was silent. She stood at the window, her back turned to the rest, but her gasping breath showed the struggle through which she was passing.
"And, besides, tell me when I could have told you," the Frau President continued. "Hardly yesterday, when you scarcely showed yourself in the drawing-room, after you came home, to say 'good-evening' either to me or to my guests. Neither was there any time to tell you while we were never alone at the doctor's, when the meagre comforts of his home had put you into such an ill humour."
"They were a source of annoyance to you, my dear grandmother, you will please to remember. You are mistaken as regards myself."