"Good heaven, I have no more earnest desire than to keep you here!" he exclaimed, with an eagerness that struck even Kitty as strange.
The Frau President was again standing by the table, turning over the leaves of a book, at which she was looking so earnestly that she seemed to have neither eyes nor ears for aught else. "Of course, my dear Kitty," she said, indifferently, "you will remain here as long as you are content to do so; only your stay must not partake in the smallest degree of the character of self-sacrifice,—that we must most decidedly prohibit. Nanni is an excellent nurse, and my maid is ready to assist her if necessary. You can leave your dear invalid without anxiety."
"Let the motive be what it may, dearest grandmamma, it suffices that Kitty wishes to stay with us," the councillor eagerly interposed. He could not turn his eyes away from the young girl, who stood entirely unmoved by the words either of the Frau President or of her guardian. "Why, in the joyful hope that you would stay with us, I ordered the new grand piano——" He broke off to breathe an ecstatic kiss upon the closed thumb and forefinger of his right hand. "Kitty, you have an instrument now in comparison with which the one in the music-room is a mere spinnet. I ordered it, I say, sent directly here."
"Oh, Moritz, that is not what I meant!" cried the young girl, thoughtlessly, with a look of actual terror in her eyes. "God forbid! Dresden is and always must be my home, and Villa Baumgarten only a temporary abode." She laughed merrily. "A grand piano would be a clumsy piece of luggage to carry about with me."
"I venture to predict that you will entertain another opinion with regard to Dresden one of these days," he rejoined, with a meaning smile. "The grand piano will be here to-morrow, and will be placed for the present in your room."
The Frau President closed her book and rested her small white hand upon the cover. "You have made other arrangements than those we agreed upon," she said, with apparent composure. "They embarrass me somewhat, but I willingly comply with them. I will write to Baroness Steiner to-day and postpone the visit she was to pay us during the month of May."
"But I cannot see why——"
"Because we cannot accommodate her, my dear Moritz. Her companion, who comes with her, was to have Kitty's room."
The councillor shrugged his shoulders. "I am very sorry, then. Of course my ward must stay where she is."
He opposed her! He dared to look calmly into the irritated old lady's angry eyes and think it quite natural that the Frau Baroness von Steiner should give place to Kitty,—he who once would have moved heaven and earth, who thought no sacrifice too great, if thereby he might tempt any person of distinction to be his guest! The thin coating of social varnish which his intercourse with refined society had given him had suddenly been rubbed off, exposing the coarse, common nature of the parvenu. True, he now possessed rank, and was wealthier than most others of his present station,—he had just reaped another golden harvest,—he could plant himself defiantly upon his money-bags, and—this he was doing.