The meal was short and uncomfortable; when they had returned to the drawing-room and were drinking their coffee the servant brought Sterzl a letter. Cecil took it hastily, looked at the address, and, not recognizing the writing, at last opened it. It contained only a half-sheet of note-paper, with a cleverly sketched caricature: Sterzl himself as auctioneer, the hammer in one hand a doll in the other, and before him the coroneted heads of Rome. Sterzl at once recognized the likeness, though his lank figure was absurdly exaggerated, and his whole appearance made as grotesque as possible. He only shrugged his shoulders and said indifferently:
"Does any one really think that such a thing as this can hurt or vex me now? Look, general--Sempaly, no doubt, is the ingenious artist of this masterpiece."
The general took the paper, and would have torn it across to prevent Sterzl from examining it any further; but before he could do so Cecil, looking over his shoulder, had snatched it out of his hand.
"There is something written on it!" he said, deciphering the scribble in one corner, in Sempaly's weak, illegible hand-writing: "Mademoiselle Sterzl, going--going--gone--!... Ah! I understand!"
His face grew purple and he breathed with difficulty.
"To send you this is contemptible," cried the general; "Sempaly drew this before he had ever seen Zinka.... I know it, I was present at the time."
"What difference does that make?" said Sterzl; "if this is the view people took of me and my proceedings! Well, and after all they were right--I should have liked to see my sister brilliantly married--I meant it well ... and I have made myself ridiculous and have been the ruin of the poor child."
His rage and misery were beyond control; he walked up and down, then suddenly stood still, looking out of the open window; then again he paced the room.
"Sempaly is incomprehensible," he began, "quite incomprehensible! I had no very high opinion of his character--particularly lately; but I could not have supposed him capable of such baseness and cruelty. What do you gather from his not coming here to-day?"
"He simply has not happened to see the paper," the general suggested. "He is gone on some expedition with his brother and his cousins."