Drawing a deep breath, she recovers her voice, and goes on, angrily: "Are you insane enough to imagine that Lato could be seriously attracted for one moment by that school-girl? The idea is absurd, I could not entertain it for an instant. I have neglected Lato, it is true, but I need only lift my finger----"
"I have said nothing," the Pole whines, repentantly,--"nothing in the world. For heaven's sake do not be so angry! Nothing has occurred, but Treurenberg has no tact, and Olga is the daughter of a play-actor, and also, as you must admit, and as every one can see, desperately in love with Lato. All I do is to point out the danger to you. Treat Treurenberg with caution, and then----"
"Hush! Go!" she gasps.
He rises and leaves the room, turning in the doorway to say, with a voice and gesture that would have won renown for the hero of a provincial theatre at the end of his fourth act, "Selina, I have ruined myself with you, I have thrown away your friendship, but I have perhaps saved your existence from shipwreck!"
Whereupon he closes the door and betakes himself to the garden-room to have a last look at the decorations there. He does not think it worth while to carry thither his heroic air of self-sacrifice; on the contrary, as he gives an order to the upholsterer, a triumphant smile hovers upon his lips. "It will surprise me if Treurenberg now succeeds in arranging his affairs in that quarter," he thinks to himself.
Meanwhile, Selina is left to herself. She does not suffer from wounded affection; no, her heart is untouched by what she has just heard. But memory, rudely awakened, recalls to her a hundred little occurrences all pointing in the same direction, and she trembles with rage at the idea that any one--that her own husband--should prefer that simpleton of a girl to her own acknowledged beauty.
[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
FAILURE.
The clever Pole had, however, been quite mistaken as to the contents of Lato's letter. Abraham Goldstein's patience with the husband of the "rich Harfink" was not exhausted,--it was, in fact, inexhaustible; and if, nevertheless, the letter brought home to Lato the sense of his pecuniary embarrassments, it was because a young, inexperienced friend, whom he would gladly have helped had it been possible, had appealed to him in mortal distress. His young cousin Flammingen was the writer of the letter, in which he confessed having lost at play, and entreated Lato to lend him three thousand guilders. To the poor boy this sum appeared immense; it seemed but a trifle to the husband of the "rich Harfink," but nevertheless it was a trifle which there would be great difficulty in procuring. And the lad wanted the money within twenty-four hours, to discharge gambling-debts,--debts of honour.
Treurenberg had once, when a young man, been in a like situation, and had been frightfully near vindicating his honour by a bullet through his brains. He was sorry for the young fellow, and, although his misery was good for him, he must be relieved. How? Lato turned his pockets inside out, and the most he could scrape together was twelve hundred guilders. This sum he enclosed in a short note, in which he told Flammingen that he hoped to send him the rest in the course of the afternoon, and despatched the waiting messenger with this consolation. His cousin's trouble made him cease for a while to ponder upon his own.