"The Englishwoman's behaviour must have struck you as extraordinary?"
She nodded.
He passed his hand thoughtfully across his brow. She did not speak, and he went on playing the English nobleman to his own entire satisfaction. His left hand, in which he held a French novel, hanging negligently over the arm of the lounge, he waved his right in the air, and said, "Of course I pity the poor creature, but she bores me. Rid me of the fool, I pray,--rid me of her!"
He then inclined his head towards the door, and buried himself in the perusal of his novel.
From that time Erika ceased to spend the evenings with Miss Sophy in the drawing-room; she withdrew after supper to the solitude of the old school-room, which in fact she greatly preferred.
Of course Miss Sophy suspected some plot of Erika's in Strachinsky's altered demeanour, and lost every remnant of sense still left in her silly head. She employed all her leisure moments in writing to her hero letters which she bribed the maid to lay upon the table in his dressing-room.
This would all have been ridiculous, if the affair had not taken a tragic turn.
One morning Miss Sophy did not appear at the breakfast-table, and when Minna went to call her she found the wretched woman in bed, writhing in agony. In despair at Strachinsky's insensibility she had poisoned herself with the tips of some old lucifer matches. The physician, summoned in haste, was barely able to save her life; and of course she left Luzano as soon as she was able to travel.
Strachinsky was much flattered that the poor woman's love for him had ended in madness, and he invested her memory with an ideal excellence, recalling her as brilliantly gifted by nature and endowed with many personal attractions.
Erika was now left without instruction. Her step-father decided that a young girl of her age needed no further supervision, and that the daughter of a poor farmer could lay no claim to any personal luxury.