The beautiful lady smiled, and Bertram succeeded in forcing a smile too.
"How very funny," he said; "but then very young girls are proverbially prone to conceive infatuation for some one or other of their masters, and I think, in Lydia's eyes, I have always been one of her instructors, in literature and what not. Poor girls! they give their affections to old Mentor, but they mean young Telemachus. Well, and there is apparently a young Telemachus on the stage already, if you have seen aright."
"Just to decide that point," replied Hildegard, "Mentor must not yet resign his functions. On the contrary, I must entreat him most urgently to help the mother with his clear vision and his advice, and to use his old influence with the daughter. I may rely upon this, my trusty friend, may I not?"
She held out her hand to him with these words. He raised it deferentially to his lips and said--
"You may rest convinced that Erna's well-being is dearer to me than anything else in the world."
Hildegard had wished and had expected another, a more definite, answer. It was still doubtful whether she had really acquired an ally in him. However, the main point was gained; she had taken the initiative, had represented the affair from her own point of view, had appealed to Bertram's friendship, had asked for his assistance, had given him a proof of her confidence, which he would doubtless accept as unconditional. This sort of thing is always flattering to a man, always makes him feel indebted. Of course, a woman must flatter a man if she would make him feel indebted.
Just then it was anyhow impossible to obtain a more definite assurance from Bertram, for the Baron and Lydia were ascending the main steps of the terrace; the Baron, in his temporary capacity as artist, clad in a costume of brown velvet, and a straw hat with a stupendously broad brim, and Lydia in such a grotesquely fantastic morning costume as to suggest the idea that she had been acting as model for some wonderful sketch of the artist. And indeed she did figure upon the canvas, but only as a bit of the foreground, which represented a portion of the terrace, across which you looked down into the valley and at the village, with the wooded hills rising behind. The Baron was evidently much pleased with his work, although he declared again and again not to have half finished it; it was not fair, he added, to apply to a hasty sketch the same standard of judgment as to a regular studio picture, in which everything would of course turn out quite different. This, Bertram could not but think, would be most desirable, but hardly very probable. This so-called sketch was evidently a picture which had already been touched and retouched, some portions had been painted over two, even three times, and divers desultory dilettante endeavours had failed to bring anything like harmony into the composition. Nevertheless he politely agreed with the ladies' words of praise, which flowed freely from Hildegard's lips, while Lydia, as was her wont, launched out in extravagant eulogy: wonderful, was it not, what progress the Herr Baron made day by day? At last there was once more a painter with a mission for historical landscapes on a grand scale! The resemblance of his genius to that of a Rottmann, a Preller--became more and more apparent. Nor did she alone think so. Only the other day, at Court, when they were talking of the pupils at the Academy of Arts, and some one mentioned the Baron's name, Princess Amelia said, and said with marked emphasis, "No pupil he, ladies, nay, a master, and a great master! The Baron is a distinct acquisition for our School of Arts; he represents a triumph!"
"Yes, it is true; the august lady is very graciously disposed towards me," asserted the Baron, stroking his natty beard. "I wonder what she will say to my new sketches."
Fortunately for Bertram, who was planning his escape under some pretext or other from this painful scene, his host now came up to greet his friend, and to ask if he felt strong enough and was inclined to go for a little drive with him; only to the porcelain factory, they would be back in an hour. Bertram declared his readiness.
"The Baron would surely like to go with you," said Hildegard, exchanging glances with her husband; "but I fear there is barely comfortable room even for two in your little trap."