Her voice, in truth, did not remind one in the least of the gloomy organ of a raven, or the passionate hoarseness of the X----, rather of a child's laugh, it was so clear and boldly gay, even if somewhat thin and shrill.
Felix, who had meanwhile been telling Elsa of Gery's scarlet fever with most interesting explicitness, grew silent, not, perhaps, because the cuckoo song was even half as interesting to him as Gery's parched lips and little hands--no! But because he noticed that the usually so patient and sympathetic Elsa no longer listened to him. Her eyes were fixed on Linda; that thin, flippant voice pained her, could it please Erwin?
Then the last note ceased. "I am so sorry that I have hindered you by my miserable playing," he excused himself. "You sing so very charmingly! Another one, I beg you."
For the first time in her life Elsa was vexed that she was not musical.
XII.
"Cuckoo," hummed Erwin absently to himself as he drove back with his wife to Steinbach through the capricious, flickering evening shadows.
A filmy confusion of pink and white, a tumbled knot of pale brown hair, two large, cold eyes, mysterious greenish riddles in a flattering, open child-face, a seductive, rococo figure which leaned over the stone balustrade of the terrace, and threw gay kisses after the departing carriage, this is the last impression which Erwin takes away with him from Traunberg, in the landau in which he now sits beside his pale wife.
"She has changed greatly for the better. It is a pity that she has such bad manners," he breaks the silence after a while.
"Do you really think that she has such bad manners?" replies Elsa, without looking at him.
"There can scarcely be any doubt as to that," says he. "Some people may certainly think that it is becoming to her. Nevertheless I should wish that she gave them up. You must undertake her neglected education, child!"