"William, I firmly believe you have taken leave of your senses," I answered, and strode past him out of the room with a look intended to express majestic indignation.
But William's ears had served him faithfully, as I presently learned at table. The company was small; no one besides the inmates, except Arthur, who had come over in the justizrath's carriage from Rossow, and greeted me as usual with excessive friendliness. The two Eleonoras, owing to the warmth of the day, appeared in virgin white, and as a group, of course. Hermine kept us waiting awhile. The commerzienrath drew me aside and whispered to me that the prince had sent him word that he must be quite satisfied about the chalk-quarry before the negotiation went any further, and that he would send over his carriage this afternoon to bring me to Rossow.
I had no time to answer this communication, which for more than one reason was unacceptable to me, for at this moment Hermine entered and I saw plainly that she had been weeping, although she tried hard to appear as gay and careless as possible. The day was so charming--so delicious! and to-morrow it would be finer still, and the party to the Schlachtensee would be too delightful! The company was to be the very nicest that could be; all young people, not an old one among them. After dinner they would go over to Trantow to pick up Hans, who could not be dispensed with, then to Sulitz, where Herr von Zarrentin and his charming wife would join them; then arrive between five and six at the coast-village Sassitz; a stroll through the dunes and the beech forest as far as the Schlachtensee; supper, with pine-apple-punch, and moonrise there; return through the wood to the cross-roads at the Rossow pines, where their carriage and horses would be ready for them; return of the whole company without exception to Zehrendorf; and wind up all with tea and punch, and, if possible, a dance for such as were very nice.
"Bravo! bravo! That is a plan!" cried Arthur, enthusiastically clapping his hands.
"I knew it would have your approval, dear Arthur," said the fair designer, stretching her hand to him over the table, with her sweetest smile; "you understand these things, and I count upon you especially."
"I did not count upon you," she added, turning suddenly to me.
"I neither said, nor supposed anything of the kind, Fräulein Hermine," I replied.
"That is the very reason why one cannot count upon you in such things. You don't think about them. Of course! How can any one whose mind is occupied with matters of so much more importance?"
Hermine was never particularly amiable in her behavior to me, but her conduct to-day was so pointedly unkind, and her vehemence too void of any visible cause, not to strike the most indifferent spectator, not to mention the steuerrath and the Born, who were very far from indifferent, and now cast meaning looks at Arthur, as if urging him to strike while the iron was hot. Arthur was evidently quite disposed to follow their counsel, but did not precisely know how to go about it; so he contented himself with giving Hermine a languishing look, and curling his little black beard. The others seemed to gather from Hermine's last words, and still more from the excited tone in which she had spoken, that there was something unusual in the air. Fräulein Duff, who had been all the time looking remarkably pale and agitated, raised her eyes, as if in despair, to the ceiling, while the justizrath riveted his gaze on a dish of salad, and drummed lightly on the table; Emilie looked at her friend Elise, and Elise at Emilie, Emilie's look inquiring "Does an innocent child like me need to understand these things?" and Elise's replying "Sport peacefully, sweet cherub! Leave this to us experienced ones!" Even William Kluckhuhn, who stood waiter in hand at the sideboard, pulled a long face, as if the turn things had taken was not altogether to his satisfaction, and the commerzienrath alone was so busy with the other waiter, who was uncorking under his eyes a bottle of the famous hock, that he had not the least idea as to the cause of the sudden silence that had fallen upon the company. He looked up in the most unconscious manner in the world, and asked innocently--"I beg your pardon, but what were you speaking about?"
The peculiar expression which I had noticed in so many different shades on the faces of the guests, grew several tints deeper. The silence was more profound; the second waiter John, who was in the act of uncorking the '22 hock, stopped with the cork half-drawn, and the plates which William was handling rattled nervously, as the steuerrath pouring out with unsteady hand a glass of wine, replied: