Her anger had suddenly passed away. She tried hard, as soon as she was conscious of this, to picture to herself her insulter in the most repulsive shape. Not succeeding in that, she made an attempt to be angry with herself, to reproach herself for her womanish weakness, in being frivolous enough to feel flattered by this robbery. But she succeeded little better than before; one thing only stood before her mind, that he and she were in the world together, and that they had both thought of one another at the same moment.
The door opened softly; the old servant stepped in and announced that Mr. Jansen wished to pay his respects.
CHAPTER VII.
Of course he had come to apologize. Angelica must have urged the necessity of his doing so very strongly indeed: must have depicted to him in pretty glowing colors the anger of her deeply insulted friend, to judge from the fact of his knocking at her door but two hours after. Her first thought was to refuse to see him. But then, what if he should be disposed to treat the matter altogether too lightly; what if he thought to appease her by some jesting or even gallant apology? Well, she would soon let him know with whom he had to deal, and that he could not escape so easily. Had she not been called "the girl without a heart," and was she not at this moment without friend or protector, forced to rely entirely upon her native dignity, which had just been so audaciously insulted?
"If the gentleman would have the goodness--I should be very glad to see him--very glad!"
She stood in the middle of the room as he entered. Her beautiful face had struggled hard to assume its coldest and haughtiest expression. But with the first look that she cast upon the visitor, the armor of ice that she had fastened about her bosom melted away.
For, in fact, a very different man from the one she had expected stood before her. Where was the confident smile that sought to make the matter appear in the light of a jest, or even of an act of homage? Where the confidence with which the famous master reckons upon absolution for the sin of having made an unknown beauty immortal?
It was true, he did not appear quite like a penitent malefactor. Erect, and with a scarcely perceptible inclination of the head, he saluted her, and his eyes did not avoid hers; on the contrary, they even dwelt upon her features with so gloomy a fire that she involuntarily lowered her eyelids, and asked herself in secret whether she was not the guilty one after all, since this man appeared before her so sad and melancholy.
"Gnädiges Fräulein," he said, "I have given you reason to be very angry with me. I merely come to inform you that the cause of your displeasure is already removed. If you were willing to visit my atelier again--which, unfortunately, I must doubt--you would see in the place where your own features confronted you this morning nothing but a shapeless mass."
"You have--you really ought to have--"