"What is the matter?" asked Euphrasia, sternly. Her whole demeanour assumed an air of command, and had Reising been a better psychologist, he would have discovered no favourable reading of the horoscope for his wedded future in the tone and manner of his Euphrasia.
"We walked quickly," said Ophelia, "and wanted to rest for a moment."
And she sat down upon the bench, breathing with difficulty and sighing, and darted one of those glances, soft as velvet, which flatter a susceptible heart wonderfully, at Doctor Reising, who stood near her. Her eyes were furnished with long silken lashes, and as they were her sole recognised beauty, she had brought the skilful management of them to a most artistic state of perfection; she laid claim to sentimentality, which was peculiarly favoured by this dowry of Nature. When she cast her eyes modestly down, they disappeared almost entirely beneath their silken curtain; if she turned them up, it lay like a canopy above their rapturous glance. But Doctor Reising did not possess his friend Doctor Kuhl's versatility in the remotest degree. Ophelia's eyelashes had no power over him after Euphrasia's plaits had bound him in their fetters, and he looked coldly down upon those speaking, upturned eyes like a dreary, rainy sky upon two widely opened flower calyx.
"There is to be a large entertainment," said Lori, dancing to and fro. "Doctor Kuhl has just told us of it, and we came, dear sister, to bring you the glad news."
"What do I care about your entertainment?"
"Oh, we are all to be invited. Herr von Blanden has engaged himself in Warnicken, and to-morrow will celebrate his betrothal. They are to dance under the big pear tree."
The news was not without its effect upon Euphrasia; she leaned her head upon her hand, and said, thoughtfully--
"What shall we wear?"
"Our summer dresses, of course," replied Lori. "I, my sap-green, you, your violet. Ophelia, to be sure, has an ugly pink dress. The bodice is much too high; it makes her look like a picottee, with a stem that is broken near the top. Emma is sensible, and always wears dark clothes, but Albertina's white dress still bears traces of the last picnic, and is covered with every variety of soil. What our two little ones wear does not matter; no one notices those half-grown up creatures."
After this weighty affair had been quickly settled by loquacious Lori, Euphrasia found time to enquire who the bride was.