A pause ensues. The little company seem paralyzed with alarm and disgust. Then Sempaly rises. "We thank you for a very pleasant evening, Baroness," he turns politely to Linda, and he and his cousin withdraw.
Linda is as white as the table-cloth. "Come, Felix, lie down," says Erwin to his brother-in-law, whose condition he does not wish to expose to the impertinent curiosity of servile lackeys.
"A cigar," murmurs Felix, excusing himself like all drunkards.
"Come;" Erwin urges him more sharply. Felix is about to make some reply, when he discovers his wife, turns his head away, and trembling throughout his entire frame, lets himself be taken to his room without resistance.
When Erwin returns to the dining-room to bid farewell to Linda, he finds her still deathly pale, with gloomy eyes, sitting in the same place.
"Linda, you are wrong to take this so seriously," says he, softly and consolingly; "it is really often an accident, a glass of poor wine----"
At his first kind word she has burst into tears. "It is not the first time," she replies, with difficulty restraining her tears. "Ah! if it--if it was only because the wine went to his head or--but no--a year ago he was the most temperate man in the world--it began in London. It cannot all be my fault. What is the matter with him? My God! What is concealed from me?"
A new light dawns upon Erwin's mind; Linda's lack of tact is excused; a boundless pity overcomes him.
At a violent motion of her pretty head her hair has become loosened and now hangs in silken splendor over her shoulders.
"Calm yourself, fasten up your hair, be prudent, my poor little sister-in-law!" says Erwin. Softly and involuntarily, as one would do to a child, he strokes the hair back from her temples.