He left the room. A short period of impatient waiting passed, when at last the door was again opened, and a lady's dress rustled on the threshold. Hugo went quickly towards the new comer.
"Ella! I knew you would not--" he stopped suddenly; his hand, stretched out in welcome, dropped slowly, and Captain Almbach stood as if rooted to the ground.
"You do not seem to recognise me quite," said the lady, waiting in vain for the rest of the greeting, "am I so much altered?"
"Yes, very much," said Hugo, whose glance still hung in intense astonishment on the figure of the lady before him. The impudent, confident sailor, who had hitherto always shown himself equal to every circumstance in his life, stood now dumb, confused, almost stupified. Who, indeed, could ever have deemed this possible!
This was what his brother's former wife had become, the shy, frightened Ella, with the pale unlovely face, and the awkward timid manner! Now only could one see how the dress had sinned, in which Eleanor Almbach always appeared like the maidservant, and never like the daughter of the house, and also that enormous cap, which, as if made for the brow of a person of sixty, had covered the youthful woman's head day after day. Every trace of all this had entirely disappeared. The light airy morning dress let the still girlishly, slight, delicate figure display itself in its full beauty, and the rich ornament of her fair plaits, which were now worn uncovered, encircled her head in all their heavy, glimmering, golden glory. Marchese Tortoni had not seen the face of the "blonde Signora," but Hugo saw it now, and during this contemplation of some seconds' duration, he asked himself, again and again, what had really taken place in these features, which were once so stolid and vacant that one reproached them with stupidity, and which now appeared so full of intellect and thought, as if a ban had been lifted from off them, and something, never suspected in them, awakened to life. Certainly around the mouth there lay a line of tender, unconquered pain, and her brow was shaded by a sadness it had formerly not known, but no more did her eyes seek the ground timidly, as if veiled; now they were clear and open, and they had truly forfeited none of their former beauty. Ella appeared to have learned not to hide any longer from the gaze of strangers that with which nature had endowed her. When she was eighteen, every one asked, shrugging his shoulders, "how does this wife come by that husband's side?" At eight and twenty, she was an apparition, fitted to compete with any one. How heavily must the burden and chains of her parents' house have rested upon the young wife, when only a few years in freer, nobler surroundings had sufficed to remove the former shroud, to the very last morsel, and to loose the wings of the butterfly. The almost incredible alteration proved of what her youthful education was guilty.
"You wished an interview with me, Herr Captain Almbach?" began Ella, as she seated herself upon an ottoman, "May I offer you a seat." Words and bearing were as assured and easy, as if coming from a perfect woman of the world receiving a visitor, but also distant and cool, as if she had no deeper concern in this visit. Hugo bowed, a slight colour tinged his cheeks, as he, following the invitation, sat down beside her.
"I begged for it. Herr Consul Erlau thought himself obliged to deny me this interview in your name, but I persisted in a direct appeal to you. I had more confidence in your goodness, my dear Madame."
She looked inquiringly with open eyes at him, "Are we become such strangers? Why do you give me this name?"
"Because I see that my visit here is considered as an intrusion to which I have no right, which I was not utterly denied, only on account of the name which I bear," replied Hugo, rather bitterly. "Herr Consul Erlau made me feel that already, and now I experience it a second time, and yet I can only repeat to you, that without the knowledge or on behalf of another, am I here, and that the other up to this moment has no suspicion of your vicinity."
"Then, I beg you to allow this vicinity to remain still a secret," said the young wife earnestly. "You will understand that I do not wish my presence to be betrayed, and S---- is far enough to make that possible!"