Herr von Strachinsky's eyebrows were lifted to a startling extent at this confession. "You--ran--after--that house-painter fellow down the road?" he asked, with a gasp at each word.
"Yes," the child replied, composedly; "and he was not a house-painter fellow, but a young artist, although I should have run after him all the same if he had been a house-painter fellow."
"Indeed! And why?" he asked, with a sneer.
She looked him full in the face. "Why? Because you treated him so badly, and I was sorry for him."
For a moment he was speechless; then he arose, seized the child by the arm, and thrust her out of the door. Without making the least resistance, carelessly humming to herself, she ran up the staircase,--a staircase that turned an abrupt corner and the worn steps of which exhaled an odour of damp decay,--whilst Strachinsky turned to the Englishwoman from Hamburg and groaned, "My step-daughter is a positive torment. I am firmly persuaded that she will end at the galleys."
The galleys were tolerably far removed from the sphere of the Austrian penal code, but Herr von Strachinsky had a predilection for what was foreign, and had recently read a novel in which the galleys played a prominent part.
Meanwhile, little Erika had betaken herself to the drawing-room, a spacious but by no means gorgeous apartment, the furniture of which consisted principally of bookcases and a piano. She seated herself at this piano, and instantly became absorbed in the study of one of Mozart's sonatas, with which she intended to celebrate her mother's return. She had a decided talent for music; her slender little fingers moved with incredible ease over the keys, and her cheeks, usually rather pale, flushed with enthusiasm. It was going very well; she stretched out her foot to touch the pedal,--an act which in her opinion lent the crowning glory to her musical performance,--when suddenly she became aware of a kind of uproar that seemed to fill the house. Dogs barked, servants hurried to and fro, a carriage drove up and stopped before the castle door. Frau von Strachinsky had returned unexpectedly.
The child hurried down-stairs, just in time to see Strachinsky take his wife from the carriage. They kissed each other like lovers,--which seemed to produce a disagreeable impression upon the little girl; moreover, it occurred to her that she did not know whether she might venture forward under existing circumstances. Then she heard her mother say, "And where is Rika?"
Without awaiting her step-father's reply, she rushed into her mother's arms.
"You look finely, darling," the mother exclaimed, patting her little daughter's cheeks. "Have you been a good girl?"