"My Dear Lanzberg: Come, if possible, at once--in any case before twelve. Linda expects you.
"With cordial greeting, yours sincerely,
"S. Harfink."
Two, almost three hours passed. Susanna's excitement became painful. What should she tell Felix? The best would be to tell him that Linda knew all. And did she not indeed know all? She had conscientiously told her daughter of a liaison which had formerly been the unhappiness of the Baron. The liaison was, on the whole, the principal thing, everything else only a detail. Only chance, which did not in the slightest accord with the whole life of the Baron before and since, and of which respectable people hesitate to speak, and which one should not exhume from the past in which it lay buried.
She was in duty bound to conceal the affair from Linda, as one must conceal certain things in themselves wholly innocent from children, because their intellect, not yet matured by experience, is not capable of rightly comprehending them.
In all her circle of acquaintances, Mrs. Harfink was the only one who knew anything definite of Lanzberg's disgrace. By chance, and through the acquaintance of a high official of the law, she had learned the sad facts. She thought of the envious glances with which all her friends had followed Lanzberg's attentions to Linda. Linda had somewhat forced the acquaintance with him. The good friends were horrified at her boldness--at her triumph. Mrs. Harfink remembered her sister, Rhoeden; what had she not done to marry her daughter to a coughing, bald-headed, Wurtemburg count, a gambler, whose debts they had been forced to pay before the marriage.
Quarter of twelve struck--was Lanzberg not coming, then? In a short time Linda would be back.
Then a carriage stopped before the "Emperor of China."
A minute later there was a knock at the door, and Felix Lanzberg entered the room, pale, worn, with great uneasy, shy eyes.
Mamma Harfink reached him both hands, and merely said, "My dear Lanzberg!" then she let him sit down.