“You possess my utmost confidence, most esteemed Miss Greifmann! Intercourse with good, or at least honorable, persons appears to me to be the first condition for enjoying life. How could any one’s existence be cheerful in the society of people whose character is naught and whose moral sense expired with the rejection of every religious principle?”
“Yet perhaps it might, Mr. Seraphin!” rejoined she, with a smile of imagined superiority. “Refinement, the polished manners of society, may be substituted for the rigor of religious conviction.”
“Polished manners without moral earnestness are mere hypocrisy,” answered he decidedly. “A wolf, though enveloped in a thousand lambskins, still retains his nature.”
“How stern you are!” exclaimed she, laughing. “And what is the second condition for the true enjoyment of life, Mr. Seraphin?”
“It is evidently the accord of moral consciousness with the behests of a supreme authority; or to use the ordinary expression, a good conscience,” answered the millionaire earnestly.
A sneering expression spontaneously glided over her countenance. She felt the hateful handwriting of her soul in her features, turned crimson, and cast down her eyes in confusion. The young man had not observed the expression of mockery, and could not account for her confusion. He thought he had perhaps awkwardly wounded her sensitiveness.
“I merely meant to express my private conviction,” said Mr. Seraphin apologetically.
“Which is grand and admirable,” lauded she.
Her approbation pleased him, for his simplicity failed to detect the concealed ridicule. After a walk outside of the city which Gerlach took towards evening, in the company of the brother and sister, Carl Greifmann made his appearance in Louise’s apartment.
“You have at last succeeded in capturing him,” began he with a chuckle of satisfaction. “I was almost beginning to lose confidence in your well-tried powers. This time you seemed unable to keep the field, to the astonishment of all your acquaintances. They never knew you to be baffled where the heart of a weak male was to be won.”