"Oh! Uncle Klinger!" she exclaimed. "Mamma is waiting for me, I dare say!--but do not scold me, I entreat you--."
Thank God for those happy innocent eyes that looked so frankly into his!--On purity like hers Scirocco could have no power! No--he could not be angry with her.--But he!
"Sempaly!" cried the old man indignantly: "What possesses you?"
"I have at length made up my mind to be happy," said Sempaly with feeling, and he raised Zinka's hand to his lips. "That is all."
"And I ought not to have forgiven him so easily--ought I?" murmured Zinka, quailing at the general's stern frown, and her head drooped.
"Zinka has been missed, you know how spiteful people are!" exclaimed von Klinger angrily, ignoring the sentimentality of the situation. Sempaly interrupted him with vehement irritation.
"What I should like to do," he said half to himself, "is to go straight back to the ball-room, and tell my most intimate friends at once of our engagement!" But even as he spoke he reconsidered the matter; "but I cannot," he went on, "unfortunately I cannot. I must even entreat you, Zinka, to keep it a secret even from your own household."
"Come, at once, with me," said the general drily, "my carriage is waiting in the Piazza. If I am not mistaken there is a little gate here which leads on to it... Yes, here it is. I will tell your mother, so that others shall hear it, that you felt ill and left before the cotillon began and that Lady Julia took you home."
When Zinka was safely on her way to the palazetto in charge of the general's trusty old coachman, the two men looked each other in the face.
"Outrageous!" growled the general furiously. Sempaly turned upon him quickly: