"Will you be silent?" replies she, laughing--triumphant.
Meanwhile her parents, who have been to the farewell performance of a famous Vienna artiste at the theatre, enter.
"Hush!" cries she with a decided gesture to her brother. "Good evening, papa and mamma!" without leaving her arm-chair. "I am frightfully fond of you, for, if you only knew of it, I am to-day, for the first time, glad to be in the world."
Papa Harfink smiles delightedly, Mamma Harfink asks, "What is it?" and all her cameos and mosaic bracelets rattle with excitement.
"She----" begins Raimund.
"Hush, I tell you!" cries Linda, then laying her arms on the old-fashioned arms of the easy-chair, her head thrown teasingly back, she asks: "Is Baron Lanzberg a good partie?"
"His affairs are very well arranged. I saw in the country register. He has scarcely any debts," says Papa Harfink.
"And he is of the good old nobility, is he not?" asks Linda.
"Did not his father receive a tip in the form of an iron crown from some tottering ministry?"
"The Lanzbergs descend from the twelfth century," says mamma. "They are the younger line of the Counts Lanzberg, who are now known as the Counts Dey."