The Colonel shrugs his shoulders. "What punishment? He is not marrying the father, and the daughter is charming--a refined beauty, a truly aristocratic girl, and I do not believe that she will ever worry Lanzberg by especial clinging to her parental house. Now I must part from you, nolens volens, Baroness--regret it deeply--I have a letter to deliver to the Countess Dey."
"I will go with you, I will go with you," cries the old lady, animatedly. "Give me your arm and imagine it was forty years ago."
And he, in his quality of man of the world condemned to perpetual politeness, gives her his arm and walks on laughing and chatting, at the side of the colossally stout woman with the servile, nodding little head--a martyr of bon ton.
The Colonel and his friend were both fond of gossip--with the difference that the Colonel, an independent man, related scandal for his own pleasure, while the Baroness very often did so to please others. Her name was Baroness Klettenstein, but usually she was simply called Klette (burr) because she could never be shaken off. She also had a second equally pretty nickname. In consequence of her indestructible life at the cost of others--she was remarkably robust for her sixty-six years--she had been christened the "immortal Cantharide." Hungrily she crept from one house to another, gained admission by a budget of malicious news, which, as we have seen, she collected indefatigably, at times even invented. She always rendered homage to the rising, never remembered even to have known the setting sun. And when, weary of her tiring parasitism, she rested in her tiny room at Prague, which was the only home she possessed, she swore that she would have been just as unselfish, just as truth-loving and discreet as others, if only her income had sufficed for her needs.
Out of breath and panting, she entered the park on the arm of the Colonel. The bandmaster, a Pole with an interesting, revolutionist face, swings the baton with graceful languor. The ladies, leaning back in their white chairs on either side of the broad gravel walk, look weary, limp, and melancholy in their gay gowns, like flowers which a too hot sunbeam has withered and faded. They are worn, thin, and colorless, but for their toilets; but the transparent paleness of their faces, the excessive thinness of their forms lends them a certain charm, something fairylike and distinguished, refinedly aristocratic and Undine-like. Invalidism is less becoming to the men at the cure; many of them resemble corpses which an enterprising physiologist has exhumed to experiment upon.
The first row of tables are already occupied, but an attendant, understanding the Klette's glance, brings forward another from the rear and places it where she is told. Hereupon the Baroness calls for coffee for two, and invites the Colonel in the most polite manner to sit beside her, and as he cannot deny that from this spot, purposely chosen by the Klette for a fine view of all present, he can soonest espy Countess Dey whom he has sought in vain, he resolves to await her here.
Slowly the guests stroll along the promenade: most noticeable of all, admired or at least stared at by all, Linda Harfink. Her large, dark hat with its scarlet feather throws a mysterious shadow on her pale face; a black lace scarf is twisted round her throat and tied in a careless knot behind. Her pale green dress clings tightly, and yet in folds around her figure. Near her walks a young man, blond and handsome; in spite of his handsome figure and Nero-profile, too foppish and dandified, too strikingly dressed in the latest fashion, to be taken for any one but an elegant parvenu.
"Who is he?" asks Klette, her mouth full of bread, a coffee cup in her hand.
"A young Baron Rhœden, born Grau. The family was ennobled five years ago, and since then only call themselves by the predicate," replies the Colonel. "A cousin of Linda--very nice fellow--garçon coiffeur, but very nice for his sphere--seems to be uncommonly smitten with his cousin."
Through the evening air floats a sentimental potpourri from the "Flying Dutchman." The Harfinks, who wish to return the same evening to Marienbad, where they are staying, have left the park. Gazing down in coquettish silence at a rose in her hand, Linda has vanished through the gateway of the park, on the arm of her cousin, in the golden light of the setting sun.