CHAPTER IX
"Life's Little Ironies"
ONE afternoon the Countess Charlotta was alone in her room walking up and down in a restless fashion for a girl who had been so recently injured. Her forehead was still bandaged and her arm in a plaster cast, but otherwise she was apparently well. Nevertheless, she showed the results of the strain of her accident and perhaps of her personal problem.
She looked older than one would have supposed from her half-joking and half-serious conversations with Bianca Zoli and the other Red Cross girls.
In spite of her natural gayety and the warmth and color of her nature, which she had inherited from her French ancestry, the girl faced a difficult future.
All her life it seemed to her she had been in opposition to her surroundings, throwing herself powerlessly against ideas and conditions she could not alter. Everything that belonged to the old German order of existence she had always hated. From the time of her babyhood her father had appeared to her as a narrow tyrant insisting that she should spend her days in a routine which pleased him, without consulting either her wishes or her talents. As a matter of fact, the small countess had a will of her own and resented dictation.
Never would the little Charlotta even in her earliest youth do what might naturally have been expected of her! From the first her wilfulness, her entire lack of interest in ladylike pursuits had been a source of trouble and anxiety to her governesses.
One characteristic of the small Charlotta was that she never seemed able to remain still long enough to learn the things which were required of her. Her one desire was to be outdoors riding on horseback over the fields, or playing with the children in the village, or in the small cottages on her father's estate.