Two weeks after recalling himself to the Countess Lenzdorff's memory, he wrote her a letter asking for her grand-daughter's hand. The old lady, not without embarrassment, informed the young girl of his proposal. "It certainly is trying," she began. "I cannot see how it ever entered his head to think of you. A blooming young creature like you, and his sixty years! What shall I say to him?"
Erika stood speechless for a moment. The old Englishman's proposal was an utter surprise to her, but, oddly enough, it did not produce so disagreeable an impression upon her as upon her grandmother. She had always wished to mingle in English society. Wealthy as she was, she was aware that her wealth bore no comparison to that of Lord Langley. And then the position of the wife of an English peer was very different from that of the wife of any Prussian nobleman. Her fatal inheritance of romantic enthusiasm had latterly found expression with her in a certain craving for distinction. What a field opened before her! She saw herself fêted, admired, besieged with petitions, one of the political influences of Europe.
"Well?" asked Countess Lenzdorff, who had meanwhile taken her seat at her writing-table.
"Well?" Erika repeated, in some confusion.
"What shall I say? That you will not have him, of course; but how shall I courteously give him to understand---- It is intolerable! Do not get me into such a scrape again. Although, poor child, you cannot help it."
Erika was silent.
Her grandmother had begun to write, when she heard a very low, rather timid voice just behind her say,--
"Grandmother!"
She turned round. "What is it, child?"
"You see--if I must marry----"