"Your daughter's manner proves to me plainly that she has no suspicion of the stain upon my honor. I have not the courage to make my confession to her myself; do it for me, my dear madam, and kindly write me whether Miss Linda, after she has learned all, will yet hear anything of me, or will turn away from me. In the latter case I will go away for some time.
"With the deepest respect, your submissive
"Lanzberg."
"Absurd, eccentric man! He will yet spoil everything with his foolish scruples!" cries she, then, looking at the letter once more: "Horribly blunt, awkward style; no practised pen, but undeniably the sentiments of a refined gentleman."
Mrs. Harfink folded her hands and thought. Should she read this letter to Linda? She had been so pleased at the prospect of Linda's advantageous match. But the strange girl was capable of giving up this brilliant parti for the sake of a trifle like this spot in Lanzberg's past.
Mrs. Harfink, in intercourse with the world very sensitive and wholly implacable, possessed theoretically that far-reaching consideration for any individuals attacked by scandal which has become so fashionable among the philanthropists of the present time. She always treated all city officials as calumniators and all accused as martyrs.
"Oh, if I were only in Linda's place, I would be angry that I had so little to pardon in him," cried she dramatically; "but Linda is so narrow, so petty. Her intellect does not reach to the comprehension of the eternal divine morality; she understands merely the narrow prejudiced morality of good society, which divides sins as well as men into 'admissible and not admissible;' to-day calmly overlooks a crime, to-morrow screams itself hoarse over a fault which offends against its customs."
While the Harfink satisfied her philanthropic heart with this subtle, humane eloquence, the girl stood waiting at the door. "The messenger begs an answer," she remarked shyly. Mrs. Harfink bit her lips impatiently. She was not capable of a decided deception, she must twist and turn it before her conscience until it took on a quite different aspect from the original one. Must, in a word, carry it out in such a highly virtuous manner that she could later deny it to her conscience.
"The messenger begs an answer!"
Mrs. Harfink seated herself at her writing-table and wrote: