July 17.
The blow has fallen! To-day the Fräulein received a letter from Frau von Waldfel, saying that she has lost everything, even her personal property, through an unwise investment. The poor woman is in great distress of mind with lawyers, creditors, and what not, but these lines at the end of her letter impressed me more strongly than all the rest: "I have just heard from Lieutenant Blum. He writes that he releases you from your betrothal, 'realizing that in this present trouble Fräulein Hartmann can have no heart for festivities.' The sly fellow has had private information of my affairs here, and doubtless learned that if I scrape together all I have there will be just enough for your dowry and no more. Evidently he had hopes of living on my income after you both were married. It seems as though my present ill-fortune were enough without enduring this fresh disappointment."
My cheeks burned with indignation as I read. "The English employ a word which just suits this officer of the German army, and that is cad!" said I, decisively.
Fräulein Hartmann looked at the blue flowers in her lap and smiled gently. There was a light in her eyes—a light indefinably beautiful—that I had never seen there before.
"Poor Auntie deserves all the sympathy you can give her," she said, "but as for myself—well, I haven't been as happy for months. I feel as though a great weight had been lifted from my heart. After all, kleine Amerikanerin," she continued naïvely, "don't you think that people are happier without a lot of money to look after? Although six months ago the thought of all the delightful things money could buy——"
"Including a lieutenant?" I interrupted, involuntarily.
"Yes, including a lieutenant," she smilingly went on, "dazzled me, and made me a bit contemptuous of my Mannheim surroundings, now I really believe that our little home there is the loveliest, dearest spot in the whole world."
"With Heinrich next door," I added.
"Perhaps nearer than next door," said the Poet's Wife, caressing the girl's blushing cheek, "at least if we are to believe what he told us this morning."
"Dear," said the Fräulein, taking my hand in hers and speaking in those sweet, earnest tones which made her so winning, "did you think me very wicked and deceitful that night at the carnival ball? It has troubled me so much—the thought that you must despise me——"