Erika pauses to listen. "Indeed! Well, it does not surprise me," her grandmother rejoins, indifferently, and Treurenberg goes on: "He is the very deuce of a fellow: with all his fine feeling, he combines just enough cynicism and honest contempt for women to make him irresistible to the other sex."
"You are complimentary, Count!" Erika calls into the dining-hall.
He looks up. She is standing in the door-way; the wrap has fallen back from her shoulders, revealing the dazzling whiteness of her neck and arms, her left hand rests against the door-post, and she is looking full at the speaker.
Old Treurenberg, who has just taken a seat beside the Countess, springs up, gazes admiringly at the girl, bows low, and says, "Pray remember that any uncomplimentary remarks I may make in your presence with regard to the weaker sex have no reference to you. When I talk of your sex in general I never think of you: you are an exception."
"We have both known that for a long while: have we not, Erika?" her grandmother says, laughing.
"But what is the cause of all this splendour, Countess Erika?" asks Treurenberg, changing the subject. "It is the first time that I have had the pleasure of seeing you in full dress."
"Erika is beginning to go out a little to please me," the old Countess explains. "I told her that, thanks to her passion for retirement, it would shortly be reported that she was either out of her mind or suffering from a disappointment in love. As this does not seem to her desirable, she has consented to go with me to Constance Mühlberg."
"I should have gone to Constance Mühlberg at all events, only I should not have chosen her reception-day for my visit," Erika declares, taking a seat beside her grandmother, leaning her white elbows upon the table, and resting her chin on her clasped hands.
Connoisseur in beauty that he is, the old Count cannot take his eyes off her. "When a woman is so thoroughly formed for society as you are, Countess Erika, she has no right to retire from it," he declares.
She makes no reply, and her grandmother asks, "Shall we see you at Countess Mühlberg's, Count?"