"Yes," said Lenore, "that is just the old regret. Our former bailiff used often to say the same. When I sit over my work, and see you and Mr. Sturm go out together, I get so hot, and I throw my useless frame aside. I can only spend, and understand nothing but buying lace; and even that I don't understand well, according to mamma. However, you must put up with the stupid Lenore as your good friend;" and she gave him her own true-hearted smile.
"It is now many years since I have, in my inmost soul, felt your friendship to be a great blessing," cried Anton, much moved. "It has always, up to this very hour, been one of my heart's best joys secretly to feel myself your faithful friend."
"And so it shall ever be between us," said Lenore. "Now I am comfortable again. And do not plague yourself any more about Eugene's foolish ways. Even I am not going to do so."
Thus they parted like innocent children who find a pleasure in saying to each other all that the passion of love would teach to conceal.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The enmity between Pix and Specht raged fiercely as ever. Now, however, Specht stood no longer alone; the quartette was on his side; for Specht was wounded in feelings that the quartette respected, and often celebrated in song. Mr. Specht was in love. Certainly this was nothing new to his excitable nature; on the contrary, his love was eternal, though its object often changed. Every lady of his acquaintance had, in her turn, been worshiped by him. Even the elderly cousin had been for a time the subject of his dreams.
On this occasion, however, Mr. Specht's love had some solid foundation. He had discovered a young woman, a well-to-do householder, the widow of a fur-merchant, with a round face and a pleasant pair of nut-brown eyes. He followed her to the theatre and in the public gardens, walked past her windows as often as he could, and did all that in him lay to win her heart.
He disturbed the quiet of her bereaved life by showers of anonymous notes, in which he threatened to quit this sublunary scene if she despised him. In the list of advertisements, among fresh caviare, shell-fish, and servants wanting places, there appeared, to the astonishment of the public, numerous poetical effusions, where Adèle, the name of the widow, was made prominent either in an acrostic, or else by its component letters being printed in large capitals. At length Specht had not been able to resist taking the quartette into his confidence on the subject. The two basses were amazed at such poetical efforts having proceeded from their office. True, they had often ridiculed them with others, while Specht inwardly groaned over counting-house criticism; but now that they knew one of themselves to have been the perpetrator, the esprit de corps awoke, and they not only received his confessions kindly, but lent him their assistance in bribing the watchman in the widow's street, and serenading her, on which occasion a window had been seen to open, and something white to appear for a few minutes. Specht was now at the summit of earthly felicity, and as that condition is not a reticent one, he imprudently extended his confidence to others of his colleagues, and so it was that the matter came to the ears of Pix.
And now there began in the local advertiser a most extraordinary game of hide-and-seek. There were numerous insertions appointing a Mr. S. to a rendezvous with one dear to him in every possible part of the town. Wherever the place, Specht regularly repaired to it, and never found her whom he sought, but suffered from every variety of weather, was repulsed by stranger ladies, and had the end of a cigar thrown into his face by a shoemaker's apprentice, whom he mistook for his fair one in disguise. Of course he, on his side, gave vent, through the same medium, to his complaints and reproaches, which led to excuses and new appointments. But he never met the long-sought-for one.