Kitty had alluded to his aunt, but she could not correct the mistake: his reply had so startled her, he spoke with such certainty. "You come from the villa?" she asked, timidly, but eagerly.
"No, I have not been to the villa," he said, with emphasis. It sounded almost as if he who never condescended to a sneer were indulging in sarcasm. "I have, indeed, not been so fortunate to-day as to see any one from there. I should have liked to see Moritz; but his guests, who were just leaving him as I passed there, were so noisily gay that I preferred to go by without speaking to him."
He had not, then, spoken with Flora since the evening before, and yet was so decided. What could it mean? Kitty wished she were away from it all; she seemed to herself like no one but Priam's ill-omened daughter, the only one who saw where all were blind. It was fortunate that at this moment the poor hen once more ventured too near her grim enemy: it gave Kitty a pretext for breaking off the conversation; she chased the fowl into the shed, closed the door and bolted it.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
When she turned round, the doctor was still standing where she had left him, but his gaze was directed towards the bridge, and he had grown slightly pale. His profile, with the tightly-compressed lips, reminded her of the moment in the castle mill when she had asked him about her grandfather's death; he was struggling with intense emotion of some kind. Involuntarily her eyes followed the direction of his own, and she could not have been more startled and shocked by the apparition of the drowned woman of former times than she was by the sight of her beautiful sister advancing across the ancient structure with as easy a grace as if she had gone hence on the previous evening with a gay "au revoir." Could it be? She glided lightly over the place where she had declared herself separated forever from the man whom she despised; only a few hours had passed since she had heaped every epithet of scorn and contempt upon his home, which she had vowed never again to enter; and here she was, with her lovely, smiling face, confronting the "dreary barn," her little feet confidently pressing the grassy paths. No wave rolled higher, no breeze stirred, to whisper to her of wrong, wilful treachery, and miserable inconstancy, while the sunshine played about her graceful form, illumining it as if she were of all earth's children the most dear.
She had on a dark dress. Rich black lace covered her fair curls, and, lying upon the snowy neck, fell in long ends over her shoulders and down her back, like the drooping wings of an angel of night. Behind her walked the councillor; he looked very animated, and was conducting the Frau President with an air of such respect that Kitty in all seriousness began to wonder whether she had only dreamed his contemptuous looks of the morning and his expressions with regard to the "old cat" and her "velvet paw."
The doctor slowly advanced to meet the approaching group, while Kitty stood by the shed as if rooted to the spot, still unconsciously holding fast the bolt which she had just pushed home. She saw the usual greetings exchanged. Nothing extraordinary happened; no angry word was uttered. The councillor warmly congratulated the doctor; the Frau President graciously smiled, showing the white tips of her teeth;—and Flora? For one moment her cheeks were dyed with a rosy flush, and her glance, usually so self-assured, wandered from the doctor's countenance to the ground at his feet, but she extended her hand with her accustomed air of good-fellowship, and the tips of her fingers were taken, if not retained, very much as they had been upon Kitty's arrival, and when Doctor Bruck turned round, his features were once more composed to marble.
As she entered the garden, Flora had hastily scanned her young sister from head to foot, smiling scornfully the while, and then turning to make some apparently malicious remark to the councillor; but now, upon her nearer approach, Kitty saw gleaming in her eyes suppressed anger, amounting to a kind of hostility.
"Well, Kitty? You seem to be perfectly at ease here," she exclaimed; "you really look quite at home, as if the keys to every drawer and closet were hanging at your girdle."
The young girl mode no reply as she slowly turned from the door she had just bolted and gazed at her sister. Was there no shame in this wayward creature? no shrinking from the sound of her own voice here upon this spot? But yesterday she had declared, "This house shall never again see mo within its walls," and now here she stood, about to enter it and to return to the "sordid surroundings."