The sisters shook hands with Lilly, and Frau Asmussen, sitting already over her medicinal glass, delivered a few platitudes on the significance of Christmas, and expressed her regret at not being able to spend it with her excellent husband. Then everyone apologised because the presents were not handsomer. At first it was the feeling that you were expected to give something, that it was your duty to give, which had disgusted these generous souls who thought giving should be spontaneous; then, when they had got over this feeling, it was too late to buy anything worth having, not that the red check overall apron wasn't decent enough, and the penwiper was not so bad either--considering business was slow.
"I am ashamed to say I have nothing at all to give," Lilly answered. But what she was most ashamed of was that she was once more on friendly terms with the Asmussen sisters.
"I have no strength of character, not a scrap," she told herself as she crunched a piece of marzipan, which the elder and worst of the sisters had given her.
The library bell rang loudly, and a man, loaded with parcels, was asking if Fräulein Czepanek lived there.
Lilly's heart bounded. "From papa--it must be from papa!" she murmured in jubilation.
For a few minutes she scarcely dared trust herself to touch the parcels. She skipped round them aimlessly tidying her hair. Only on the sisters' exhortation did she undo the strings. With what envious eyes the two girls looked on!
Such beautiful things came to light. A faced-cloth dress, lace-trimmed, a delicate blue foulard, a pink silk petticoat, shoes of glossy patent leather and tan suède, six pairs of gloves, three pair elbow-length, all sorts of jabots and cravats, a fichu of Brussels lace to wear with Empire frocks, pocket-books, stationery, bonbons--more and still more things; even the sorely needed winter hat was included, a soft fluffy grey beaver in a picture-shape, that always had suited her noble style of features. It was trimmed with ribbon and ostrich feathers.
Altogether it was quite a trousseau.
The faces of the two sisters grew longer and longer. Lilly herself ceased to be delighted. She began rummaging in wild anxiety through the boxes for a clue to the sender, a letter or card. She had long ago abandoned the idea of her father having come back to heap on her such generous gifts. Yet an instinct of self-preservation made her keep up the deception.
At last, at the bottom of the glove-box, she found a card. She ran away to read it in the library. Under the hanging lamp she scanned, blanching with fright, the visiting-card of "Baron von Mertzbach, Colonel in Command of the ---- Regiment of Uhlans." Beneath his name he had written in the thick stiff handwriting she knew already, "With good wishes to his lonely little friend from his own lonely hearth."