Berkow had been dumb so far, and had half turned away, but at these last words he looked round at his son quickly with some astonishment.
"I should not have believed that anything could irritate you so much," said he slowly.
"Irritate? Me? You are mistaken, we did not reach the pitch of irritation. My lady-wife deigned from the first to mount on the high pedestal of her exalted virtues and of her noble descent, and I, who, in both respects, am equally unworthy, preferred to admire her only from a distance. I should seriously advise you to do the same, that is, if ever you attain to the happiness of her society."
He threw himself down on the sofa again with an air of contemptuous indifference, but even in his sneer there was a touch of that irritation his father had noticed. Berkow shook his head, but the subject was too embarrassing, and the rôle he played towards his son in this business too painful for him not to seize the first opportunity of putting an end to the discussion.
"We will talk it over again at a fitting time," said he, taking out his watch hastily. "Let us have done for to-day. There are yet two good hours before the people arrive; I am going over to the upper works. You will not come with me?"
"No," said Arthur, relapsing into indolence.
Berkow made no attempt to use his authority. Perhaps, after such an interview, the refusal was not disagreeable to him. He went away, leaving the young man alone once more, and, with the renewed stillness, all the latter's apathy seemed to return to him.
While the first bright spring day smiled on the world without, while the woods lay bathed in sunshine, and the sweet scent of the pines rose up from the hills, Arthur Berkow lay within in the darkened room, where the curtains were so carefully lowered, the portières so closely drawn, as though he alone were not created to enjoy the free mountain air and the bright light of day. The air was too keen for him, the sun too dazzling. It blinded him to look out, and he said to himself that his nervous system was shaken beyond all description. The young heir, who had at his disposal all that life and this world can give, thought, as he had often thought before, that after all both the world and life are horribly empty, and that it is assuredly not worth while to have been born at all.
CHAPTER VII.
The state dinner, prepared with lavish expense and on a most luxurious scale, was over at last. It had procured for Berkow one special triumph, independently of the pleasure he must have felt at seeing how numerous were the guests around him. The nobility of the neighbouring town, and its leading personages in particular, had always been exclusive to the last degree. No member of it had condescended as yet to enter the house of a parvenu, whose equivocal antecedents still shut him out from the highest circles of society; but the invitations bearing the name of Eugénie Berkow, née Baroness Windeg, had been universally accepted. She was, and would ever remain, a scion of one of the most ancient and noble houses of the land.