After dinner Linda sang. Erwin accompanied her, and Pistasch lost his tongue with enthusiasm, except for the three words, "Superb! magnificent! delicious!" which he burst forth with again and again, gasping for breath.
Elsa, who took no interest in French chansonnettes, and Sempaly, who did not care to hear them rendered by respectable women, or those who at least should be so, stood together in a window recess half chatting, half silent, like people who know and understand each other well. But suddenly Scirocco was silent, his glance wandered to Felix, who sat in the darkest corner of the drawing-room, and in order to give himself countenance, stroked Erwin's great hunting-dog. A little rattle of glasses had attracted Sempaly's notice. He went up to Felix, and after he had spoken a few words to him returned with him to Elsa. Elsa was frightened at sight of her brother. His cheeks were flushed to his forehead, the features swollen, the eyes shining as in one who has a severe fever.
When everything had become quiet again in Steinbach, and Elsa was alone with Erwin in the drawing-room, she went to the table from which Sempaly had brought Felix away, and discovered there the corpus delicti in the shape of a half-emptied flask of Chartreuse.
"Ah!" cried she shuddering, and turned to Erwin. "Do you know the latest?--Felix drinks!"
Erwin lowered his head. "Drinks--drinks!" he murmured with embarrassment but excusingly. "You must not call it that exactly; it is not yet so bad!"
"You--you seem to have known it," cried Elsa, staring at him. He looked away.
Elsa paces twice through the room, her arms crossed on her breast. Her short, unequal breaths can be heard. Then she stops before Erwin; the blood has rushed to her cheeks, and causes there two uneven red spots under her eyes. Her hatred for Linda suddenly bursts forth. "Oh, this repulsive, ordinary, tactless person! How deeply she has dragged him down!" she says, with set teeth.
Erwin, to whom the cause of this unlovely and immoderate anger is wholly inexplicable, is displeasedly silent. This irritates Elsa still more, and in an even more unpleasant tone she continues, "Well, do you, perhaps, doubt that she and only she has ruined Felix by her incredible lack of tact?"
For the first time since Erwin has known his wife he lost patience with her, and shrugging his shoulders, replied, "I find it hard to expect tact from a person who does not suspect the complicated difficulties of her position."
"Erwin!--Erwin!--you--you surely do not believe that Felix would have married Linda without telling her of his circumstances?" She was now quite pale again, she trembled, her voice sounded weak and hoarse. He was terribly sorry for her, at this moment he would have given everything to be silent. He took refuge in vague phrases. "A mere suspicion--I spoke without thinking."