"A surprise, Rosel," the major explains. "Baroness Paula!"
The first to go forward and welcome the young lady cordially is Harry.
[CHAPTER V.]
BARONESS PAULA.
The unexpected entrance of the famous beauty produces two important results,--the final cessation of the reading of 'Parzifal,' and a temporary reconciliation between Wenkendorf and Countess Zriny.
Whilst Frau Rosamunda receives her guest, not without a degree of formal reserve, the two aforesaid worthy and inquisitive individuals retire to a corner to consult together as to where these Harfinks come from, to whom they are related, the age of their patent of nobility, and where they got their money.
Since neither knows much about the Harfinks, their curiosity is ungratified. Meanwhile, Baroness Paula, lounging in a garden-chair beside the majestic hostess, chatters in a lively fashion upon every conceivable topic, as much at her ease as if she had been a daily guest at Zirkow for years. Her full voice is rather loud, her fluent vocabulary astounding. She wears a green Russia linen gown with Turkish embroidery on the skirt and a Venetian necklace around her throat, with an artistically-wrought clasp in front of her closely-fitting waist. The effect of her cosmopolitan toilet is considerably enhanced by a very peaked Paris bonnet--all feathers--and a pair of English driving-gloves. She has come in her pony-carriage, which she drives herself. Not taking into account her dazzling toilet, Paula is certainly a pretty person,--very fully developed and well grown, with perhaps too short a waist and arms a trifle too stout. Her features are regular, but her face is too large, and its tints of red and white are not sufficiently mingled; her lips are too full, the dimples in her cheeks are too deep when she smiles. Her hair is uncommonly beautiful,--golden, with a shimmer of Titian red.
Her manner corresponds with her exterior. There is not a trace of maidenly reserve about her. Her self-satisfaction is impregnable. She talks freely of things of which young girls do not usually talk, and knows things which young girls do not usually know.
She is clever and well educated,--left school with honours and listened to all possible university lectures afterwards. She scatters about Latin quotations like an old professor, and talks about everything,--the new battle panorama in Vienna, the latest greenroom scandal in Pesth, the most recent scientific hypothesis, and the last interesting English divorce case. One cannot help feeling that she has brought a certain life into the dead-and-alive little company which had failed to be enlivened by the reading of 'Parzifal.'
"Quelle type!" Wenkendorf remarks to Countess Zriny.