Meanwhile, Erika had grown very pale. She felt as if some dear old plaything, to which she had attached all sorts of pathetic memories, had fallen into the mire! It was gone; let it lie there: she would not stoop to pick it up and wipe it off.
Goswyn, who was observing her narrowly, could not understand the sudden change in her face. He had often had occasion to notice the sensitiveness of her moral nature, but to-day the key to the riddle was lacking. What could it possibly matter to her whether or not an obscure artist painted an improper picture?
He tried to begin a conversation with her, but had hardly done so when Countess Lenzdorff returned, walking slowly, with her head held haughtily erect, a sign with her of extreme indignation.
"You seem more shocked, Countess, than I expected you to be," Goswyn remarked, as she appeared. "Do you think the picture so very bad?"
"Nonsense!" the old lady replied, impatiently. "It was not painted for school-girls and boys: it did not shock me. It is not the picture that has made me angry, but--whom do you think I found in the room with her cousin Nimbsch and two or three other young men? Your sister-in-law Dorothea! So young a woman had better not look at a picture before which it is thought necessary to hang a curtain, but it is beyond a jest when she takes a train of young men with her to see it. If one is without principles,--good heavens! it is hard enough to hold on to principles in this philosophic age, when one is puzzled to know upon what to base them,--one ought at least to have some feeling of decency, some æsthetic sentiment."
CHAPTER IX.
For some time of late the loungers in Bellevue Street had enjoyed an interesting morning spectacle. Before the hotel the first story of which was occupied by Countess Anna Lenzdorff, three beautiful thoroughbred horses pawed the ground impatiently between the hours of eight and nine. A stable-boy in velveteens held two of the horses, while a groom in a tall hat and buckskin breeches reverently held the bridle of the third steed, which was provided with a lady's saddle. The groom was bow-legged and red-faced, very English in appearance,--in fact, an ideal groom.
Before long a young lady would appear at the tall door of the house, a young lady in a close-fitting dark-blue riding-habit and a tall silk hat beneath which the knot of her gleaming hair showed in almost too great luxuriance, and close behind her would come a fair-haired officer of dragoons. After stroking her steed and feeding it with sugar, the young lady would place her foot in the willing hand of her tall escort and lightly leap into the saddle. Then there would be a slight arrangement of skirt and stirrup, and "Is it all right, Countess Erika?"
"Yes, Herr von Sydow."
And in an instant the officer and his groom would mount and the little cavalcade would wend its way with clattering hoofs to the adjacent Thiergarten.