"From scrofula to 'despised love,'" added Pistasch. He knew the famous prescription well, and knew, too, that it was the basis of one of Fräulein Klette's numerous financial manœ uvres.
"It really is an extraordinary remedy, Wjera, and it would do you good, too, Mimi;--it would be the very thing for Zinka I am sure," Fräulein Klette rattled on. "I have wrought wonders with it. Do let me have a few bottles of it put up for you."
"You needn't take that trouble, Carolin," said Pistasch maliciously, "I have two or three quarts of your specific on hand, and it will give me pleasure to supply the ladies."
"As you please, I do not insist," said the Fräulein chagrined; whereupon she drew from her reticule the famous negro's head and with great energy and a very long thread began to embroider a sulphurous gleam on his ebony nose.
CHAPTER V.
The fierce heat of the day is over, the rays of the westering sun cast mildly gleaming bands of gold here and there amid the pleasing confusion of furniture in the drawing-room, where both coverings and hangings of Flemish stuff made the prevailing colour a dim, cool green.
The world forgetting, the betrothed pair were standing by a little table whereon was a large, blue Sèvres vase, filled with crimson Jacqueminot roses, a vase, whereof the depressing shape was that of a funeral urn, and whereof the decorations were after the pedantic taste of the first Empire, with medallions of gaudy flowers upon a dark-blue surface. Oswald and Gabrielle had just agreed in declaring the vase almost as hideous as the pretentious monstrosity placed in the library of the Vatican as a memorial of Napoleonic generosity.
"Mamma's Russian relatives have a positive passion for blue Sèvres vases, and green malachite table tops upon gilded tripods," said Oswald, "but one cannot throw a well-meant gift out of doors!"
And then they went on to talk of the future, of their wedding-trip which was to be to the East, and to laugh over certain events of the first days of their young affection, in that fair spring-time in Paris. Suddenly Gabrielle interrupted their talk with "Now you are yourself again, but at dinner you looked so cross, I was absolutely afraid of you!"
"Oh, you foolish little girl, how could you be afraid of me?"