The evening has come. Dinner is over. All are sitting in more or less comfortable garden-chairs on the terrace before the castle, beneath the spreading boughs of a linden, now laden with fragrant blossoms.
The stars are not yet awake, but the moon has risen full, though giving but little light, and looking in its reddish lustre like a candle lighted by day; the heavens are of a pale, greenish blue, with opalescent gleams on the horizon. The sun has set, twilight has mingled lights and shadows, the colours of the flowers are dull and faded. Around the castle reigns a sweet, peaceful silence, that most precious of all the luxuries of a residence in the country. The evening wind murmurs a dreamy duo with the ripple of the stream running at the foot of the garden, and now and then is heard the heavy foot-fall of a peasant returning from his work to the village.
Baroness Meineck is holding forth to her hostess, who listens patiently, or at least silently, upon the subject of the cholera-bacilli and the latest discoveries of Pasteur. To Rohritz, who, will he nill he, has had to place his hands at the disposal of the arch Stasy as a reel for her crewel, the Baroness's voice partly recalls a sentinel and partly a tragic actress; she always talks in fine rounded periods, as if she suspected a stenographer concealed near. While the quondam beauty, with a thousand superfluous little arts, winds an endless length of red worsted upon a folded playing-card, he glances towards the spot where Stella is telling stories to Freddy, and involuntarily listens.
Since the Baroness, perhaps because she has reached some rather delicate details in her medical treatise, sees fit to lower slightly her powerful voice, he can hear almost every word spoken by Stella. If he is especially susceptible in any regard, it is in that of a beautiful mode of speech. What Stella says he is quite indifferent to, but the delightful tone of her soft, clear, bird-like voice touches his soul with an indescribably soothing charm.
"Now that's enough. I do not know any more stories," he hears her say at last in reply to an entreaty from her little cousin for "just one more."
"No more at all?" Freddy asks, in dismay, and with all the earnestness of his age.
"No more to-day," Stella says, consolingly. "I shall know another to-morrow." She kisses him on the forehead. "You look tired, my darling! Is it your bedtime?"
"No," the captain answers for him, "but he could not sleep last night for delight in the coming of our guests, and he is paying for it now. Shall I carry you up-stairs--hey, Freddy?"
But Freddy considers it quite beneath his dignity to go to bed with the chickens, and prefers to clamber upon his father's knee.
"You are growing too big a fellow for this," the captain says, rather reprovingly: nevertheless he puts his arm tenderly about the boy, saying to Stella, by way of excuse, "We spoil him terribly: he was not very strong in the spring, and he still enjoys all the privileges of a convalescent,--hey, my boy?" By way of reply the little fellow nestles close to his father with some indistinct words expressive of great content, and while the captain's moustache is pressed upon the child's soft hair, Stella takes a small scarlet wrap from her shoulders and folds it about his bare legs.