"Yes, yes." And Frau von Leskjewitsch began an eager search in a small gilt cottage which had once been a bonbonnière and now served as a receptacle for photographs. In vain. Upon a closer examination several of the photographs were found to be missing. Little Freddy confessed with a repentant face that he had cut them up to make winders for twine. His mother laughed, kissed his sleepy, troubled eyes, and sent him to bed. Thus Baron Rohritz was left to draw from fancy a possible likeness of Stella Meineck.
CHAPTER II.
[BARON ROHRITZ.]
Stasy had vented so much malice upon Stella that Rohritz had involuntarily begun to think well of her. After he had retired, in the watches of the night, and was trying in vain to be interested in a volume of Tauchnitz, his thoughts were still busied with her. "Poor thing," he reflected, "there must be something attractive about her, or Les and his wife would not be so devoted to her. And, after all, what did that venomous old maid's accusations amount to?--that she has an antipathy for artillery-officers,"--Rohritz as a former cavalry-man shrugged his shoulders indulgently at this weakness,--"and that she wants to go upon the stage. That, to be sure, is bad. I know nothing in the world more repulsive than girls of what are called the better classes who are studying for the stage."
And Rohritz recalled a certain officer's daughter whom he had once met at an evening entertainment, and who in proof of her distinguished talent had declaimed various 'selections.' He had been quite unable to detect her talent, and had spoken of her contemptuously as an hysterical tree-frog. The appellation had met with acceptance and had been frequently repeated.
The remembrance of the officer's bony daughter lay heavy on his soul. "Yes, if Stella should remind me in the least of that hysterical tree-frog, I really could not stay here much longer," he thought, with a shudder. "And in any case I cannot but regret these last pleasant days. That old dandy and the faded beauty were bad enough, but they could be ignored; while a young girl--and a relative, too, of the family---- Pshaw! at all events I can take my leave."
With which he put out his candle and went to bed.
What it was that was dear to him in the sleepy and very uninteresting life at Erlach Court it would be difficult to say. Perhaps he prized it as chiming in so admirably with the precious ennui which he had brought home from America ten years previously, and which had since been his inseparable companion. It was such a finished, elegant ennui; it never yawned and looked about for amusement, never in fact felt the least desire for it, but looked down in self-satisfied superiority upon those childish mortals who were actually capable of being irritated or entertained upon this old exhausted globe.
He was proud of this kind of moral ossification, which was gradually paralyzing all his really noble qualities.
"'Tis a pity!" said Leskjewitsch, whose youth was still warm in his veins, and who declared that he had never been bored for half an hour in his life, except upon a pitch-dark night in winter at some lonely outpost when he had been delayed on the march; and although the honest captain was a demi-savage and "still in roundabouts," we cannot help repeating his words with reference to Rohritz, "'Tis a pity!"