"You are mistaken; it gives her bitter pain to be obliged to judge you so. I know how she has wept over it."
Gustave sprang up as if electrified.
"Is that true? Have you really seen it? She has wept?"
Frida looked with unmeasured surprise at his beaming face.
"And you are glad of it. Can you really blame her if she has a mistaken opinion of you when you have caused that mistake? Can you be so revengeful as to torment her for it?"
"Oh! the wisdom of sixteen years!" cried Gustave, bursting into irrepressible laughter. "You will defend your friend against me, will you?--against me? You are indeed very wise for your years, my little Frida, but of such things you understand nothing, and, indeed, it is not necessary. You can still wait a couple of years. But now tell me all about it! When did Jessie weep? What did she cry for? How do you know that the tears concerned me? Tell me, tell me, or I shall die of impatience!"
His face indeed betrayed the highest excitement, and he seemed actually to devour the words from the girl's lips. Frida seemed certainly to know nothing of such things, for she looked astonished to the last degree, but yielded at last to his urgency.
"Jessie asked me seriously a short time ago if I would really entrust my whole future to such an egoist as you. I defended you, awkwardly enough, as I dared not betray you, and was obliged to submit to all the reproaches heaped on you."
"And then?" asked Gustave breathlessly, "and then?"
"Then, in the midst of the conversation, Jessie suddenly burst into tears, and cried--'You are blind, Frida; you persist in your blindness, and yet I have only your happiness in view! You don't know what dreadful pain it gives me to have to place this man in such a light before you, or what I would give if he stood as pure and high in my eyes as in yours!' And then she rushed away and locked herself in her room. But I know that she cried for hours."