"No," said Zinka shortly.
No sooner had the maid gone on her errand than the hapless Zinka felt utterly wretched and almost repented of having written so indignantly... She might have said all that was in the note without expressing herself so bitterly. She thought the words over, knit her brows, shook her head--and at that moment her eye fell on another letter which had been brought to her with Sempaly's, and which she had forgotten to open. She saw that the writing was Truyn's. She hastily read the note which was a short one.
"Dear Zinka:--My poor little girl has been much worse and the doctor gives me very little hope. She constantly asks for you, both when she is conscious and in her delirium. Come to her if you can. Your old friend,
"Truyn."
"P. S. It is nothing catching--inflammation of the lungs."
Zinka started up--she forgot everything--her happiness, her grief, Sempaly himself--remembering only Truyn's indefatigable kindness and the sorrow that threatened him.
"Nothing catching...." she repeated to herself: "poor man! he thinks of others even now--it is just like him. While I ... I?" She colored deeply, for she recollected how that evening the child had sat shivering by her side and she had not noticed it.
"I had my head turned by a kind word from him...." she thought vexed with her own folly.
In a very few minutes she was hurrying across the Corso towards the Piazza di Spagna. Her maid had some difficulty in keeping up with her. Zinka almost flew, heeding nothing and looking at no one, till, in the Piazza di Spagna, she came upon a group of persons coming out of the Hotel de Londres and felt a light hand on her arm. Looking round she saw Nini.
"Good-morning. Where are you off to in such a hurry?" asked the young countess pleasantly.