But Baby would not have it otherwise. Now the trial succeeded admirably. The photographer showed the negative in which Baby's delicate face, with the solemn, staring eyes, and the shy, smiling mouth could plainly be recognized. Elsa nodded with satisfaction, but begged that he would wash out her figure. Then the old photographer--he knew Elsa from her childhood--surveyed his work with the look of an artist, and said, "Ah, Baroness, it would be a shame for the pretty picture. Has the Baroness one of the last photographs which I took of her as a bride? It is just the same face."
And Elsa let him have his way; involuntarily the delight with which he held the dim negative against his rough coat-sleeve amused her, and she even stole a glance in the mirror, the first glance for a long time, and thought that although somewhat pale and thin, she did not look so very old and faded as she had thought. She rejoiced at this discovery, and rejoiced that her richly embroidered black gown was so becoming, and rejoiced over Baby's picture, and looked forward to the moment when she should take it to Erwin.
When she now got into the carriage waiting below with Baby, and the servant closed the door, the child suddenly almost sprang out of her mother's lap, and stretched out her little arms, and cried in a clear, bell-like voice, "Papa! Papa!" As Baby's vocabulary is still very limited, and she had recently bestowed the title of Papa upon Litza's pony, Elsa glanced somewhat sceptically in the direction in which the child's arm pointed, but really saw Erwin about to enter a jeweller's shop.
Linda Lanzberg was on his arm!
Elsa grew deathly pale. When the carriage, as upon entering she had directed, stopped before a toy store, she did not alight, but ordered, "Home!"
All reconciling feelings toward Erwin changed into a condition of boundless excitement; for the moment she felt a kind of hatred for him. When at dinner he asked, "Elsa, were not you in Marienbad to-day? It seemed to me that I saw the carriage pass when I was in Stein's," she answered, coldly, "I was there. I had something to attend to. And did you buy anything of Stein?" she then asked, as if casually. "Will he mention Linda?" she thought, but he replied half laughingly, "A pink coral necklace for the little one. To-morrow is, if I am not mistaken, her christening day." In fact Baby had been named after the Countess Dey, the sensible name, Marie.
This explanation did not relieve Elsa in the slightest. The most innocent significance which she could ascribe to his presence there with Linda was that he had asked her advice in the choice of an ornament for the child. It did not occur to her that he could have met Linda in Marienbad quite accidentally. The rest of the evening she was in a hopelessly bad humor. Every word that Erwin spoke pained her, his manner of laying a pair of scissors on the table vexed her. With that, fever shone in her eyes and burned in her cheeks. The kiss which every evening he imprinted upon her forehead had long become a conventional ceremony, but to-day she wished to evade this formality. She disappeared from the drawing-room immediately after tea, upon some pretext, and did not return again.
The next day was a holiday, Baby's christening day, the day after Juanita's visit to Traunberg.
Most exceptionally, this time Erwin did not appear at breakfast, and when Elsa asked after him, the word was, "The Baron breakfasted in his own room, and had then gone away."
About half-past eleven, as Elsa sat in the nursery, weary and languid, holding Baby on her lap, the door opened and Erwin entered. Baby stretched out her little hands joyously, but Elsa's eyes grew gloomy and she struck the child's hand reprovingly. Erwin grew deathly pale, pale as she had never seen him before.