CHAPTER XIII.
“Hopeless grief is passionless.”
It was the anniversary of one of the great victories achieved by Germany in the war of 1870, and Berlin had scarcely known a day so filled with noise, and glitter, and color, and esprit as this day had been.
The Baroness Von Eulaw, the beautiful American, was more sought for than ever, and the too arduous round of social duties and engagements were beginning to tell upon her delicate constitution. Cards had been received by the baron and his wife for a reception at the palace, and such an invitation could scarcely be overlooked, especially as no entertainment seemed acknowledged by her friends to be complete without the presence of the baroness. Therefore, retiring a little earlier this evening than was usual from her own drawing rooms, the baroness was well advanced with her toilette when she discovered letters which the footman had left upon her table during her absence, and among them one bearing the postmark of Tucson, Arizona, and addressed in a well-known hand.
She felt too excited to trust herself farther, and, before tearing the envelope, she sent her maid with a message of her sudden indisposition, which she begged the baron to deliver in person to the emperor, and asked, furthermore, not to be disturbed.
It was all one to the baron at this hour, and though he speedily departed for the imperial palace, it is doubtful whether the high officials in waiting deemed it advisable to admit him to the imperial presence.
Dismissing her servants, the baroness was left alone for the night. Then she turned to her dressing-table and stood while opening the letters, glancing hurriedly at their contents, all but one, and this she turned over many times. What was the burden of its mission, and what did it contain? Finally her trembling fingers picked absently at the envelope, as if she had forgotton how to proceed. She might be unafraid, for there was his own handwriting before her.
With this thought a thrill went through her heart, and with a sudden motion she tore the envelope quite apart, and her own photograph fell to the floor. She did not stoop for it, for her eyes were fixed upon the page. Slowly she read word by word, lingering over the last, and cutting it away from its context, as if fearful that another word should overwhelm her reason.
She finished, and an awful silence fell upon her. She could hear her heart beat against her rich corsage, and her breath crackled as it came through her dry lips. What was the purport of that letter? She had already forgotten. Something surely had left a heavy pain at her heart. Just as slowly she read it through again.
Then he was not dead—or, stay, he might be, for did he not say “probably,” not “possibly”? Then, still standing before the dressing-table, she leaned forward, and, putting her face close to the mirror, she muttered, looking into her own deep eyes the while, “Great God! what did I do?” For a full moment she stood thus, then, lifting the powder-puff from the jeweled case, she mechanically swept her cheeks and brow and sat down. Then she caught the letter and read it again, this time more clearly and calmly, “the probable fatal termination,” and again, “until the day after you became the Baroness Von Eulaw.”
She looked at her toilette. What was she doing bejeweled and brocaded that night? Where were the sackcloth and ashes she had earned? She arose and pulled the diamonds from their places, and the beautiful robe from her lovely shoulders, and put on a gown of creamy plush, bordered with some dark, rich fur, and, slowly tying the cords, her eyes fell upon the picture at her feet.