It was the baroness's day at home. The silly woman was sitting dressed and displayed--a grey glove on one hand, while with the other she pretended to arrange a dish of bonbons.
"How kind of you!--" she exclaimed as the general entered the room. The stereotyped formula came piping out of her thin lips without the smallest variation to every fresh visitor, as chilling and as colorless as snow.
He had hardly greeted the baroness when he looked round for Zinka--at first without seeing her; it was not till a bright voice exclaimed:
"Here I am, uncle, come and give me a kiss," that he discovered her, in the darkest corner of the room, leaning back in a deep arm-chair and looking rather tired and sleepy but wonderfully pretty and unwontedly happy.
"I am so tired, so tired!--you cannot think how tired I am," she said, laying his hand coaxingly against her cheek, "and mamma is so cruel as to insist on my staying in the drawing-room because it is her day at home, and I was sound asleep when you came in, for thank heaven! we have had no visitors yet. I sat with Gabrielle all last night and the night before without closing my eyes; but then I was so glad to think that the little pet would not take her medicine from anyone but me; and last night, at length, in the middle of one of my stories, she fell asleep on my shoulder. But then in order not to disturb her I sat quite still for six hours. I felt as if I had been nailed to a cross--and to-day I am so stiff I can hardly move." And she stretched her arms and curled herself into her chair again with a pretty caressing action of her shoulders. "You ought to have stayed in bed," said the general paternally. "Oh dear no! why I slept on till quite late in the morning. Besides, my being tired is of no real importance; the great point is that Gabrielle is out of danger: Oh, if anything had happened to her!..." and she shuddered; "I cannot bear to think of it. Count Truyn is firmly convinced that I have contributed in some mysterious way to the child's amendment, and when I came away this morning he kissed my hands in gratitude as if I had been the holy Bambino himself. I laughed and cried both at once, and now I am so happy--my heart feels as light as one of those air balls the children carry tied by a string, that they may not fly off up to the clouds. But why do you look so grave? are you not as glad as I am, uncle that...."
The baroness who had been looking at her watch here expressed her surprise that not a living soul had come near them to-day.
"You are evidently not a living soul, uncle--nothing but my dear grumpy old friend," said Zinka with her pathetic little laugh. There was something peculiarly caressing and touching about her to-day; the old man's eyes were moist and his heart bled for the sweet child.
Outside the door they heard a heavy swift step--the step of a man in pressing but crushing trouble; the door was torn open and Sterzl, breathless, green rather than pale, foaming with rage, stormed in--a newspaper in his hand.
"What is the matter--what has happened?" cried Zinka dismayed. He came straight up to her and stared at her with dreadful eyes.
"Were you really in the garden with Sempaly during the cotillon?" he said hoarsely.