"Are you going to take any one with you?"
"Why?" asked he, and raised his eyebrows; then suddenly laughing aloud he added, "Would you perhaps like to accompany me, mouse? The night is mild, I will find you an easy path; we need not go far."
She hesitated, only for a moment she hesitated. She had formerly often gone with him; he had bought her a small rifle, and with anxious carefulness taught her to shoot, and as long as her health was good enough they had often hunted gayly together like good comrades. Why must just now Mimi Dey and the grouse hunt in the Tyrol come to her mind?
"Thank you, I dare not venture out in the dew;" thus politely, but without a trace of warmth she refused his good-natured offer, and he shrugged his shoulders slightly and vanished.
English philanthropy suddenly lost all interest for Elsa. She took leave of Miss Sidney quite absently, and went to her room which, since baby's existence, she had shared with the delicate little creature. She passed two tormenting hours; she was tortured by the most nonsensical fancies; she thought only of poachers and assassins; she did not close her eyes until she heard Erwin's step creep thoughtfully, softly past her door, but at least she had not been like Mimi Dey.
Sempaly and Pistasch had accepted the invitation to dine in Steinbach on the Sunday for which Linda was invited. Elsa had been able to secure no ladies. Never had Linda been more beautiful than on this Sunday. She wore a dazzling toilet; "from Worth," she replied, in explanation to some polite remark which Elsa had made upon her dress. "From Worth, but I had to change it entirely. I cannot bear Worth any longer; he is too American. And how do you like my gown, Erwin?" she turned to him.
"Linda, you surely are not trying to make me think that you care anything about the taste of such a rusty hayseed as I am!" cried he, laughingly.
"Ah, you know very well that you are the only one, yes, the only one on God's earth from whom I will accept fault-finding," answered Linda, and putting her arm around Elsa's neck, she whispered in the latter's ear, "Your husband has bewitched me, Elsa. If I did not wish you the best of everything, I really could envy you him."
Oh, the serpent! She feels very well that Elsa shivers in her arms, and she is happy.
During the dinner Elsa suffered fearful torments. Monosyllabic she sat between Scirocco, who, more quiet and melancholy than usual, did not help her to talk, and Pistasch who, gazing at Linda, forgot to talk. Linda, on the contrary, chatted unweariedly, entertained the whole table with her odd little stories, and knew how to absorb Erwin so deeply by her artfully naïve flatteries and carefully veiled coquetries that he, the most polite man in the world, scarcely found time to address a few pleasant phrases to the Englishwoman who, for the sake of symmetry, sat at his left.