"Good heavens, are you all determined to be so unjust to the doctor?" cried the councillor, in despair. "No blame—not the smallest—can be attached to him; he brought all his skill, all his scientific knowledge, to bear——"
"My dear Moritz, you should hear what my old friend Doctor von Bär has to say upon that point," the Frau President said, in interruption, lightly tapping him upon the shoulder and making a significant motion of her head towards Flora, who had gone to her writing-table.
"Oh, do not mind me, grandmamma! Do you think me so blind and deaf as not to know what Bär's opinion is?" the beautiful girl exclaimed, with bitterness. "Bruck has, besides, condemned himself: he has not ventured to come near me this evening."
Hitherto Henriette had been standing with her back towards the rest. Now she turned round; a burning blush suddenly coloured her sallow cheek and as quickly faded. Her eyes were wonderfully fine, revealing depths of passionate feeling. They glowed like stars as she turned them, with a mixture of shy terror and positive hatred, upon her sister's countenance.
"Your last accusation he will refute in person; he will shortly be here, Flora," said the councillor, evidently relieved. "He will tell you himself that he has been driven hard indeed, to-day. You know how many patients he has seriously ill in town,—among them the poor little Lenz girl, who cannot live until morning."
The lady laughed a low, bitter laugh. "Is she going to die? Really, Moritz? Well, Bär, too, came here to me before going to grandmamma; he spoke of the child, whom he saw yesterday, and thought not very ill; he feared, however, that Bruck was upon a false track. Bär is an authority——"
"Yes, an authority filled with envy," said Henriette, in a clear, ringing voice. She had hastily approached, and laid her hand upon her brother-in-law's arm. "Give up trying to convince Flora, Moritz. You must see that she is determined to find her lover guilty."
"Determined? 'Tis false! I would give half that I possess to regard Bruck as I did in the beginning of our engagement,—with the same proud trust and confidence," Flora exclaimed, passionately. "But since the death of the Countess Wallendorf I have been a silent prey to doubt and mistrust; now I doubt no more: I am convinced. I know nothing, it is true, of that feminine weakness that loves without ever asking, 'Is he whom I love worthy my devotion?' I am ambitious, wildly ambitious; I care not who knows it. Without that mainspring I too might saunter along the broad highway of the commonplace like the weak and indolent of my sex. God forbid such a fate for me! How an aspiring and intellectual woman can pass her life quietly and composedly, linked to an insignificant husband, has always been incomprehensible to me; I should writhe beneath the shame of such a position."
"Oh, indeed! would it so shame you? Well, well, I suppose it would require more courage than is needed to hold forth to a roomful of students upon æsthetics and what not," Henriette said, with a smile full of malice.
Flora cast a contemptuous glance at her sister. "Hiss, little viper, if you will. What can you know of my ideal?" she said, with a shrug. "But you are right in thinking I should be more at home in the lecture-room than by the side of a man who has stamped himself a bungler in his profession; I could not endure such chains."