“The Freule was not ready, as yet, to receive him.” Had she sent him no message? “No.” The fiery lover went off to the barracks and worried everybody.
In the afternoon he called again. The sounds of a piano came pouring down upon him from up-stairs during his brief wait on the steps. How brilliantly she played! A little too wildly—like a musical tornado.
He was again shown into the front drawing-room. It was again empty. Again he paced restlessly to and fro, but this time he twisted his mustache.
He heard a footfall in the adjoining apartment; the music, however, had not yet stopped. He was longing for it, now, to do so.
The Baroness van Trossart came bustling in, hot and flurried. “My dear boy,” she began—“my dear boy, sit down.” She caught hold of his hand and drew him down on a low settee by her side. “My dear boy, you and Helena have had a quarrel. The worst quarrels always come first. Now tell me what it is all about.”
Gerard opened his light, innocent eyes. “There has been no quarrel that I know of, Mevrouw,” he answered. “What does Helena say?”
The Baroness’s substantial chaps fell. “Helena says nothing at all. That is the worst of it. She has locked herself in, and she won’t speak to any one. She has been playing the piano for hours—you hear her now—and her uncle trying all the time to learn his speech for next Monday! I’ve been screaming to make her stop, but I can’t, and I got some dust in my eye, as it is, through the key-hole.” She sighed. Gerard, with heightened color, looked down at his spurs.
“Then you don’t know what’s wrong?” the Baroness repeated, helplessly.
“No, indeed, I don’t.”
“The excitement must have got on her nerves; but I wish, at least, she would see Papotier.”