To all this I could give but one explanation; for a second, that might also have been possible, my modesty rejected at once. The pretty girl had been angry with me ever since our meeting on the steamer. But if this were so, why all those inquiries about me of Paula? Whence came the interest which she manifestly took in my fate? I saw her again before me as I had seen her on the steamboat, her red lips closely compressed, and her blue eyes darting indignant flashes at me. She had told me that I must let her father help me, since her father was rich; and I had replied that for that very reason I did not wish to be helped by him. Was not that the exact state of the case? Did I want anything from him? Had I not rather come to give the rich man some advice of which he seemed to be greatly in want? advice which, if he followed it, was to make him richer than he had ever been? No, I did not come into this house as an asker of favors. I could hold my head proudly erect, as beseems a free man; and if it was meant as an irony upon my humble position that I was here assigned this splendid apartment, I had only to consider myself worthy of the attention, and the solecism vanished.
"Will you please to come now?" said William Kluckhuhn, appearing at the door. I had intended to put on my best suit of clothes, which, with the necessary supply of linen, and a few papers and drawings, formed the entire contents of my portmanteau, but the radical state of mind into which I had happily wrought myself scorned such trivialities, and it was a gratification to me to follow my guide just as I was down the wide staircase to the lower hall, and to a door which he obsequiously threw open for me, and through which, without the least confusion, I entered a large parlor, richly furnished and brilliantly lighted by lamps standing on various tables.
At one of these tables, at the further end of the room, sat the company, consisting of the commerzienrath, his brother-in-law the steuerrath, the steuerrath's lady, and Fräulein Duff. The commerzienrath came to meet me with outstretched hand, crying in his loud voice that he was unspeakably delighted to welcome his dear young friend to his house.
"To be sure I have had you in my house a long time already," he went on, after he had grasped my hand--"a half year already, and I never knew it! It is outrageous; but these girls never will learn reason. For the merest nothing they will make a secret of things that we would cheerfully pay a thousand thalers to know."
He said this with so much warmth that if I had ever doubted whether he had really known that I was in his establishment, that doubt now entirely disappeared. He had known it all along, but had no interest in appearing to know it until I could be of real profitable use to him.
Perhaps it was this observation that made me receive so coolly the friendly protestations of the rich man; but I had to smile, and I felt real pleasure when now the kind-hearted Fräulein Duff put down the tea-pot, at which she had been officiating, and came gliding towards me with a coy smile upon her thin lips, and her eyes lifted to express the emotions of her soul. She held out her hand with the fingers bent and drooping, in precisely the style of a tragedy-queen who expects it kissed by a loyal vassal. But the good lady was thinking of nothing of the sort; it was merely her way of offering her hand; and I took the thin pale hand and pressed it cordially, though cautiously. The sensitive nature of the excellent Fräulein felt at once the sincere good-feeling that my pressure implied, and she returned it with nervous force, her pale eyes filled with tears, and she whispered up to reach my ear: "Do not be annoyed, and do not be angry with her; it is not hate, it is maidenly coyness; do not despair--wait and trust--seek faithfully----"
Fräulein Duff had not time to complete her favorite phrase, for the commerzienrath turned again to me and drew me to the table, by which the steuerrath and his lady had been standing straight as candlesticks from the moment I entered the room without moving from their places, like a pair of wax-figures in a cabinet.
"You have no idea how glad my brother and sister-in-law are to see you again!"' said the commerzienrath, malicious joy sparkling in his small glittering eyes.
"Delighted!" said the steuerrath, offering me two fingers of his long white hand, which I did not take.
"Delighted!" said his lady, with a fixed look at the lamp on the table.