She had made an exceedingly becoming toilet--a dark dress of light material, that left bare her shoulders, which were still youthful in appearance; and a Venetian point-lace veil, thrown with studied carelessness about her head, and fastened on one side by a fresh, dark-red rose. The dead white of her cheeks looked more blooming than usual in the warm light of the candles, and her keen, piercing eyes and white teeth vied with one another in brilliancy.
"I am so glad you have kept your word," she exclaimed to the young men, giving one of her soft little hands to each of them. "I hope, too, your talented friend and master will also find his way here; and you shall not regret having come. To be sure, I told you beforehand you must be contented with what your ears would let you enjoy. Still, your eyes sha'n't go away quite unsatisfied. Come, I will show you something beautiful."
She took Felix's arm, and, talking rapidly all the time, led him to the other end of the salon. In a corner, on a semicircular sofa, sat several mothers and duennas, and in the chairs on either side perhaps a half dozen young girls, all belonging to the stage or the music-school, engaged in earnest conversation with some young musicians about the latest opera and the last concert. A little to one side of them a group of elderly gentlemen could be seen gathered about a slight, youthful figure, who sat near a little flower-stand, and who appeared to be listening in rather an absent way to a white-haired little man, who was giving a long disquisition on Bach's Passion-Music. Her back was turned toward the side from which the countess approached with Felix. Now, upon hearing the hostess's voice, she turned with much dignity.
"Allow me, ma toute belle, to introduce to you Baron von Weiblingen and Herr Rosenbusch," said the countess. "The gentlemen are artists, dear Irene; Herr Rosenbusch is a painter and musician.--You have brought your flute, haven't you?"
The painter exhausted himself in assurances of his inability to produce his sounds of Nature, as he called them, for any ears but his own; but the countess had already turned to Felix again.
"Did I say too much?" she whispered, loud enough for the Fräulein to hear her. "Isn't she charming? But your silence says enough. Happy youth! For a woman's ears there is no sweeter music than such silence, when she herself is the cause of it. I leave you to your enchantment; bonne chance!"
She tapped his arm lightly with her black fan, nodded slyly to the beautiful girl, and disappeared once more in the crowd about the piano.
The old gentleman, a musical amateur of the old school whom the countess hoped to convert to the new movement, had withdrawn upon the approach of the young men. Rosenbusch took advantage of the moment to make his bows as gracefully as possible, and to open the conversation by asking how the gracious Fräulein liked Munich. Then, upon turning round to give Felix a chance to say something, he discovered to his great surprise that the latter had withdrawn into one of the window niches, from which he vanished a few minutes after. "What devil has got into our young baron?" thought Rosenbusch. It seemed to him out of all propriety to abruptly turn one's back on a charming young lady. However, he determined to take advantage of this opportunity to show himself in a still more favorable light, for the Fräulein pleased him.
She was very simply dressed, which fact, however, only served to contrast her advantageously with the others, with their silks and showy ornaments. The excursion that was to have lasted several days had been shortened, for the old countess had been seized with an attack of neuralgia, and Irene had scarcely reached home when she was taken possession of by her fellow-lodger for this, as the latter had assured her, entirely improvised soirée, for which there was no need to make any great toilet. Her uncle had fled to a gentlemen's club. It was impossible for her to refuse the invitation.
In truth, it was a matter of perfect indifference to her into what company she went. What did she care for any strange faces since the one which was dearest to her had become a stranger? And she had not had the faintest suspicion that she should meet him here.