The room looked very pleasant, with its light furniture revealed in the shaded brilliancy of coloured hanging lamps. One window was open; a low rustle of leaves was wafted in through the pale-green silken curtains upon the warm languorous breath of the spring night. Her grandmother seated herself in her favourite arm-chair beside her reading-table, with Erika opposite her on a frail-looking little chair, bolt upright, with her hands in her lap, and a very distressed expression of countenance.
"This letter is from Goswyn," the old lady began, tapping the letter in her lap.
"Yes, grandmother," murmured Erika.
"You guessed it?" the old lady asked, in a hard, unnatural voice, and with an exaggerated distinctness of utterance, which were very strange to her granddaughter.
"I know his handwriting."
"H'm! You know what is in the letter?"
"How should I?" Erika's pale cheeks flushed crimson.
"How should you? Well, then, I must tell you"--she smoothed down her dress with an impatient gesture--"that you refused his offer to-day: that is what the letter contains. Surely you should know it. Such things are not done in sleep."
"Ah, yes, I know that," Erika murmured, beginning to be irritated in her turn; "but how was I to suppose that he would write it to you? I cannot see what he does it for?"
"What for? He informs me that he must deprive himself of all intercourse with us for a time, that he has obtained leave of absence and is going away from Berlin."