"Confound the fellow!" murmurs the Count; nevertheless he rises to follow Schmytt, and kisses the fingertips of each lady in token of farewell. "Countess Erika," he says, with a final glance of admiration, "if I were but thirty years younger!--Ah, you think it would have been of no use," he adds, turning to the grandmother; "but there's no knowing. If I am not mistaken, the Countess Erika is zealous in the conversion of sinners, and I should have been so easily converted in view of the reward. But do me the favour to leave a card upon the Neerwinden: you will not repent it. One is never so well entertained as at her evenings; and if you would like to see Lozoncyi in all his glory----"
"But, Hans, the Princess will be waiting," Schmytt interposes.
"I am coming." And Count Treurenberg vanishes. The old Countess looks after him with a smile.
"I cannot help it, but I have a slight weakness for that old sinner," she says. "He is so typical,--a genuine Austrian cavalier,--fin de siècle, witty without depth, good-natured with no heart, aristocrat to his finger-tips, without one single unprejudiced conviction. How you impressed him to-night! I do not wonder. Lozoncyi ought to see you now: what a splendid portrait he would make of you! H'm! do you know I really should like to go to a Neerwinden evening?"
"That you may have the pleasure of seeing Herr von Lozoncyi in all his glory?" asks Erika.
CHAPTER XX.
Curiosity carried the day. The Countess Lenzdorff left her card at the Palazzo Luzani, and as a consequence the Baroness Neerwinden called upon both ladies and left a written invitation for them which informed them that "my dear friend Minona von Rattenfels will delight us by reading aloud her latest, and unpublished, work."
To her grandmother's surprise, Erika seemed quite willing to go to this one of the Baroness Neerwinden's entertainments, and Constance Mühlberg accompanied them. The party was full of laughing expectation, much as if the pleasure in prospect had been a masquerade.
Expectation on this occasion did not much exceed reality: the old Countess and Constance Mühlberg were extremely entertained. And Erika----? Well, they arrived at a tolerably early hour, ten o'clock, and found the three immense rooms in which the Neerwinden was wont to receive almost empty.
The lady of the house, when they entered, was seated on a small divan, beneath a kind of canopy of antique stuffs in the remotest of these rooms. Her black eyes were still fine; her features were not ignoble, but were hard and unattractive.