The old lady bit her lip. "I will write immediately," she said, and gathered up her train to go. "The situation in which I find myself placed, from no fault of my own, is scarcely an enviable one, I must say," she said, in a tone of some bitterness, elevating her eyebrows and speaking over her shoulder.
"And all on my account!" Kitty exclaimed, approaching, and extending her hand to detain the Frau President. "Moritz, you cannot mean that I, young girl as I am, should exclude any friend of the Frau President's. It cannot be. Have I not my own home in the mill? I shall take up my abode there when Frau von Steiner arrives."
"That you certainly will not, my dear Kitty; I decidedly protest against that," the Frau President rejoined, coldly but firmly, and all the haughty arrogance of her nature shone in her eyes. "Your mother never had any unkindness upon my part to complain of; but this intimate association of the villa and the mill is repugnant to my very soul, and least of all would I expose such a connection to the severely critical eye of my refined and aristocratic friend." She stiffly inclined her head. "I shall be in the blue drawing-room, Moritz, in case you wish to present your guests." And she left the room.
The councillor waited with a scornful air until the rustle of her silken robes had died away and the door of the music-room had closed audibly, and then he indulged in a low chuckling laugh.
"You have had your lesson, Kitty," he said. "There is no doubt that the velvet paws conceal sharp claws. Yes, yes, the old cat knows how to scratch. I myself could show scars enough. But, thank Heaven, her turn has come! She must endure what she most abhors; she is no longer dangerous. With Von Bär pensioned, her influence at court and in society is destroyed." He rubbed his hands in smiling satisfaction. "Not a hair's-breadth shall you stir, my dear child; you have a better right in my house than all the rest of them,—remember that!"
He was interrupted. A servant entering announced that the guests awaited their host. Moritz hastily seized his hat, and would have given Kitty his arm, but she slipped past him into the corridor. This transformed guardian, with his bewildering tenderness of voice and manner, pleased her not at all; his cold, business-like letters had been much more to her taste. What a strange change there was in him! Involuntarily she thought of her recent reception in this house; she seemed still to hear the anxious whisper in which the councillor had reminded her of the respect she owed to the Frau President; and here he was, sneering at her behind her back, and beginning to set bounds to her power, hitherto so unquestioned beneath his roof. All this terrified the young girl; it was inexplicable, and as uncomfortable as the close crimson room, with its musty odour of books and papers upon which she now turned her back to return to the house by the river.
[CHAPTER XV.]
By the afternoon of this day the sick-room in the doctor's house looked precisely as it had done when the invalid had first been carried into it forty-eight hours before. At her earnest entreaty, the doctor had banished thence the elegant intruders from the villa. Outside, in the wide hall, upon the rough tiled floor, stood ranged against the wall the apple-green arm-chairs and the elegant screen, while about the simple earthen vase containing the spring bouquet stood the gilt porcelain toilet service. The stoneware was again advanced to honour, and the old-fashioned cushioned chairs, with their black serge covers, were in their former places. The little fountain shot up its tiny spray from a circle of plants growing in earthen pots, and upon a table stood the large cage in which were Henriette's canary-birds, brought hither by the wish of the sick girl. The pretty little golden creatures fluttered in and out, perfectly at home, flying around the bed, eating sugar from their mistress's waxen hand, and swinging in the hanging-baskets of vines suspended in the windows.
Nanni, the maid, had been sent to the villa to rest about noon, and the dean's widow had taken upon her the charge of the invalid for the day. The old lady was still in the brown silk dress, over which she had tied a large white linen apron to deaden the rustle of the silk.
Henriette already knew of the change that had taken place. Her maid had told her how a gentleman from court had been received in the hall by the doctor's aunt and conducted by her into the doctor's study,—a gentleman from the court with Bruck, who had so lately been only dispensary physician! This, in addition to the festal attire of the dean's widow and her joyful face, had excited Henriette's curiosity; she grew restless, and never ceased asking and conjecturing until the doctor sat down by her bedside and in his simple, quiet way informed her of what had occurred. This he had done while Kitty, in Flora's room, was a witness of the scene occasioned by the nearly simultaneous announcement by Fräulein von Berneck and the councillor of their startling news.