A cold chill fell on Zinka's heart--she ran up the familiar stairs. In Truyn's drawing-room sat Gabrielle's English governess--anxious but helpless.
"May I go in?" asked Zinka.
"No, wait a minute--the doctor is there." At this moment Truyn came out of the child's room with Dr. E---- the German physician, and conducted him down-stairs. Truyn had the fixed, calm, white face of a man who is accustomed to bear his sorrows alone.
When he returned he went up to Zinka and took her hand: "She asks for you constantly," he said, "but do you think you can prevent her seeing that you are unhappy and alarmed?"
"Yes--indeed you may trust me," said Zinka bravely, wiping away her tears; and she went into the child's room "as silent and bright as a sunbeam."
CHAPTER IV.
Some one must have seen Zinka and Sempaly in the course of their moonlight walk or else have found out something about it in spite of the general's precautions; this was made evident by an article which came out on the Friday after the ball in a French 'society paper' published weekly in Rome. The title of the article was "a moonlight cotillon;" it began with an exact description of Zinka, of whom it spoke as Fräulein Z---- a S--l, the sister of a secretary in the Austrian Embassy; referred to the sensation produced by her appearance as Lady Jane Grey, spoke of her as an elegant adventuress--"a professional beauty"--and hinted at her various unsuccessful schemes for winning a princely coronet; schemes which had culminated in a moonlight walk, a few nights since, during a ball at the house of a distinguished member of Roman society, and which had outdone in audacity all that had ever been known to the chronique scandaleuse of Rome. "Will she earn her reward in the form of a coronet and will the pages of 'High Life' ere long announce a fashionable marriage in which this young lady will fill a part?--that is the question," so the article ended.
"High Life,"--this was the name of the paper graced by this effusion--was scouted, abused and condemned by everybody, covertly maintained by several, and read by most--with disgust and indignation it is true, but still read. On this fateful Friday every copy of "High Life" was sold in no time, and before the sun had set Zinka's name was in every mouth.
What said the world of Rome? Lady Julia cried, had some tea, and went to bed; Mr. Ellis said "shocking!" assured his wife that he was convinced of Zinka's innocence, and that it would certainly triumph over calumny; after which he quietly went about his business and spent two whole hours in practising a difficult passage on the concertina.
It was the Brauers--the Sterzls' old neighbors before mentioned--who contributed chiefly to the diffusion of the article, supplementing it with their own comments. They had some acquaintance among the "cream" of Rome, though they had not been invited to the ball at the Brancaleone palace. Frau Brauer assumed a tone of perfidious compassion: it was a terrible affair for a young girl's reputation, though, for her part, she could see nothing extraordinary in a moonlight wandering with an intimate friend. Her husband, to whom the Sterzl family had paid very little attention--the baroness out of conceit, and Cecil and Zinka because he was in fact intolerably affected, pompous and patronizing--said with a sneering smile that he had never seen anything to admire in that little adventuress, with her free and easy innocence--pushing herself into society she was not born to. He had always thought it most unbecoming; and it must be a pleasant thing indeed for the Duchess of Brancaleone to have such a scandalous business take place in her house--she would be more careful for the future whom she invited!