"Nothing very bad. But come and see for yourself." She led him through the crowd of dancing couples to a small ante-room, dimly lighted by pink Chinese lanterns, where the windows were thrown open, it being the first cooling retreat from the ballroom. Felicitas was sitting directly in the icy draught surrounded by a circle of admirers, who filled with noise and laughter the retiring place in which they had no business to be, as they ought to have been dancing.
Leo saw, and his wrath rose so fiercely that at first he could scarcely breathe.
"Here is another friend of yours, my dearest," said Frau von Stolt before she went away. "Now your grass-widowhood will be completely consoled."
Leo felt that this was a thrust at himself as well as her, and he grew still more furious.
"Friend, brother and cousin rolled into one," cried Felicitas, holding out her ungloved left hand to him. "Why has your majesty not been seen for such ages?"
"You will catch cold, Felicitas," was his answer. "Don't fuss, my friend, but give your lion's paw to these young men, and be a bon garçon."
Lizzie's "wild team," as they entitled themselves with pride, were all there--Otzen, Krassow, Zesslingen, and Neuheim, and the two soldier sons of the house, of course.
It had all been in vain, then, the sacrifice of his manliness, the plunge into a maze of lies and deceit. She had reopened the undignified flirtation with these silly boys without troubling herself about his opinion. He might have spared himself everything; all the long anguish, beginning on the Isle of Friendship that September morning, and culminating on the altar steps the other day. A red haze dimmed his sight, the invariable signal of one of his most furious outbursts.
"Pull yourself together," an inward voice commanded. He realised that in any passage of arms with these youths he must be worsted, as she apparently was oblivious of any harm being done. So he shook hands with them and then said very firmly--
"You know, Felicitas, how careful Ulrich is of your health. I cannot stand by and see you catch your death. Take my arm."