The young lady tossed her head pettishly: "But, dear me, man does not live for work alone."
"There are natures--mine, for instance--to which work is a positive want, an absolute necessity. A butterfly, such as you, cannot understand this. It flies and flutters about in the sunshine, gleaming with a thousand hues--to perish when the first sharp touch brushes the many-coloured dust from its wings. Pleasant enough, but very transitory, this gay butterfly existence!"
There was something of the old sarcastic ring in his voice as he spoke the last words. Gabrielle assumed a highly-offended expression of countenance.
"Oh, so you think I am only a sort of gaily-painted, frivolous moth, Uncle Arno?"
"I think it would be unjust to require of you that you should meet suffering, or face struggles of any kind," said Raven, more gravely. "Beings of your order are created for the sunshine, and can exist in no other element. Work and the battle of life must be left to me, and to such as me. To be a sunbeam, and to cheer and lighten the darkness of others, is a vocation, too, in its way. You are quite right, it is foolish inexorably to exclude the brightness for fear lest it should blind one. Why should not autumn, for once, be gilded by its golden rays?"
He had stooped down, and was looking deep into the young girl's eyes, when a side door was noisily opened, and Baroness Harder rustled over the threshold. Raven quickly drew himself erect, casting a glance that was anything but friendly at his sister-in-law, who, happily, did not observe it. She was at that moment passing the great mirror in the wall, and taking in it a last general review of her appearance. The lady had profited by her brother-in-law's liberality in no sparing fashion. Her rich toilette had but one fault: it was a thought too overladen to be in perfect taste. The costly satin train was almost lost to view beneath the velvet and lace which covered it. A whole parterre of flowers adorned her hair, and on her neck and arms sparkled the diamonds which Raven's generosity had rescued from the wreck of the Harder fortunes. All that the many arts of the toilette can effect had been accomplished, and with their aid and assistance the Baroness might this evening have made good her claim to be considered a beautiful woman, had it not been for the youthful, blooming daughter at her side. Before the grace and freshness of that seventeen-year-old maiden, no artificial charm could hold its own; and, by force of contrast, the mother appeared that which, in point of fact, she really was, a faded, middle-aged lady.
"Excuse me for keeping you waiting," said she, approaching her brother-in-law with her wonted sweetness of manner. "I did not know you were already in the drawing-room, Arno; and none of the guests have arrived as yet. I hope Gabrielle has been amusing you in my absence."
Raven made no reply. He was visibly annoyed by the interruption.
"Our visitors will be here shortly," he remarked, after a while; and, indeed, scarcely had he spoken the words, when the first carriage drove up.
The Baron offered his arm to his sister-in-law to lead her to her place at the upper end of the room, and, as they went, he glanced with keen scrutiny from mother to daughter.