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Countess Erika's Apprenticeship

<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2> It is later by four-and-twenty hours. Countess Lenzdorff, with her grand-daughter, has just returned from a drive in a close carriage,--a drive interrupted by a couple of calls, and by a little shopping in the interest of the young girl's wardrobe. She is now sitting near the fire, a teacup in her hand, and saying, "You cannot go out very much this season, especially since you are not to be presented until next winter, but you can divert yourself with a few small entertainments. It was well to order your gown from Petrus in time: people must open their eyes when they see you first." Meanwhile, Erika has taken off her seal-skin jacket, and is sitting beside her grandmother, thinking of the gown that has been ordered for her to-day,--a white cachemire, so simple,--oh, so simple! "Nobody must think of your dress when they see you," her grandmother had said: nevertheless it was a triumph of art, this gown. "Everything about you must be perfect in style upon your first appearance in the world," her grandmother now says. "People must find nothing to criticise about you at first: afterwards we may, perhaps, allow ourselves a little eccentricity. I have a couple of gowns in my head for you which Marianne can arrange admirably, but just at first we must show that you can dress like everybody else,--with a slight difference. You must produce a certain effect. Give me another cup of tea, my child." Erika hands her the cup. The old lady, pats her arm caressingly. "Petrus is quite proud to assist at your début: at first I thought of sending to Paris for a dress for you," she adds, and then there is a silence. The old lady has lain back in her arm-chair and fallen asleep. She never lies down to take a nap in the daytime, but she often dozes in her chair at this hour. Twilight sets in,--sets in unusually soon and quickly to-night, for the winter which had seemed to have bidden farewell to Berlin has returned with cruel intensity. The rain which on the previous day had forced Countess Brock into Frau von Geroldstein's arms and coupé has to-day turned to snow: it is lying a foot deep in the gardens in front of the grand houses in Bellevue Street, and is falling so fast that it has no chance to grow black: it lies on the trees in the Thiergarten, each twig bearing its own special weight, and down one side of each trunk is a broad bluish-white stripe; it lies on the roofs, on the palings of the little city gardens, yes, even on the telegraph-wires which stretch in countless lines against the purplish-gray sky above the white city. For a while Erika gazes out at the noiselessly-falling flakes: the snow still gleams white through the twilight. The girl has ceased to think of her gown: her thoughts have carried her far back,--back to Luzano. That last winter there,--how cold and long it had been!--snow, snow everywhere; nothing to be seen but a vast field of snow beneath a gloomy sky, the poor little village, the frozen brook, the river, the trees, all buried beneath it. The roads were obliterated; there was some difficulty in procuring the necessaries of existence. The cold was so great that fuel cost "a fortune," as her step-father expressed it. Erika was allowed none for the school-room, where she was wont to sit, nor for the former drawing-room, where was her piano. The greater part of the day she was forced to spend in the room, blackened with tobacco-smoke, where Strachinsky had his meals, played patience, and dozed on the sofa over his novels. What an atmosphere! The room was never aired, and reeked of stale cigar-smoke, coal gas, and the odour of ill-cooked food. Once Erika had privately broken a windowpane to admit some fresh air. But what good had it done? Since there was no glazier to be had immediately, the hole in the window had been stuffed up with rags and straw. Yet the worst of that last winter had been the constant association with Strachinsky. One day, in desperation, she had hurried out of doors as if driven by fiends, and had gone deep into the forest. Around her reigned dead silence. There was nothing but snow everywhere: she could not have got through it but that she wore high boots. Here and there the black bough of a dead fir would protrude against the sky. No life was to be seen,--not even a bird. The only sounds that at intervals broke the silence were the creak of some bough bending beneath its weight of snow, and the dull thud of its burden falling on the snow beneath. As she was returning to her home she was overcome by a sudden weakness and a sense of utter discouragement. Why endure this torture any longer? Who could tell when it would end, this intense disgust, this gnawing degrading misery, suffering without dignity,--a martyrdom without faith, without hope? And there, just at the edge of the forest, close to the meadow that spread before her like a huge winding-sheet, she lay down in the snow, to put an end to it: the cold would soon bring her release, she thought. How long she lay there she could not have told,--the drowsiness which she had heard was the precursor of the end had begun to steal over her,--when on the low horizon bounding the plain she saw the full moon rise, huge, misty, blood-red. The outlying firs of the forest cast broad dark shadows upon the snow, and upon her rigid form. The snow began to sparkle; the world suddenly grew beautiful. She seemed to feel a grasp upon her shoulder, and a voice called to her, "Stand up: life is not yet finished for you: who knows what the future may have in store?" Hope, curiosity, perhaps only the inextinguishable love of life that belongs to youth and health, appealed to her. She rose to her feet and forced her stiffened limbs to carry her home. Good heavens! it was hardly a year since! and now! She looks away from the large windows, behind the panes of which there is now only a bluish-white shimmer to be discerned, and gazes around the room. How cosey and comfortable it is! In the darkening daylight the outlines of objects show like a half-obliterated drawing. The subjects of the pictures on the walls cannot be discerned, but their gilt frames gleam through the all-embracing veil of twilight. There is a ruddy light on the hearth, partially hidden from the girl's eyes by the figure of the old Countess in her arm-chair; the air is pure and cool, and there is a faint agreeable odour of burning wood. From beneath the windows comes the noise of rolling wheels, deadened by the snow, and there is now and then a faint crackle from the logs in the chimney, now falling into embers. Erika revels in a sense of comfort, as only those can who have known the reverse in early life. Suddenly she is possessed by a vague distress, an oppressive melancholy,--the memory of her mother who had voluntarily left all this pleasant easy-going life--for what? Her nerves quiver. Meanwhile, Lüdecke brings in two lamps, which in consequence of their large coloured shades fail to illumine the corners of the room, and hardly do more than "teach light to counterfeit a gloom." That grave dignitary was still occupied in their arrangement, when he turned his head and paused, listening to an animated colloquy in two voices just outside the portière which separated the Countess's boudoir from the reception-rooms. Evidently Friedrich, Lüdecke's young adjutant, who was not yet thoroughly drilled, was endeavouring to protect his mistress from a determined intruder. "If you please, Frau Countess, her Excellency is not at home," he said for the third time, whereupon an irritated feminine voice made reply,-- "I know that the Countess is at home; and if she is not, I will wait for her." "The fairy," said Countess Lenzdorff, awaking. "Poor Friedrich! he is doing what he can, but there is nothing for it but to put the best face upon the matter." And, rising, she advanced to meet Countess Brock, who came through the portière with a very angry face. "That wretch!" she exclaimed. "I believe he was about to use personal violence to detain me!" And she sank exhausted into an arm-chair. "Since I ordered him to deny me to every one, he only did his duty, although he may have failed in the manner of its performance," Countess Lenzdorff replied. "But he ought to have known that I was an exception," the fairy rejoined, still angrily. "Yes, he ought to have known. And now tell me what you have on your mind, for I see by your bonnet's being all awry that you have not engaged in a duel with that simpleton Friedrich without some special cause." "Ah, yes!" Countess Brock groaned. "I have a request--an audacious request--to make, and you must not refuse me." "We shall see. Is it fifty yards of red flannel for your association for the relief of rheumatic old women?" "Oh, if it were only that I should have no doubt of your assent,--every one knows how generous you are; but you have certain whims." The wicked fairy's smile was sourly sweet: "I begged Goswyn to prefer my request, for I know how much you like him, and that you would not willingly refuse him anything; but he would not do it. He behaves so queerly to me." "Tell me what you mean, without any further preliminaries. I am curious to know what the matter is with which Goswyn will have nothing to do." "It is about my next Thursday,--no, not the next, I shall simply skip that, but the one after the next,--which, under the circumstances, ought to be particularly brilliant. I want to have tableaux, and two of the greatest beauties in Berlin have promised to help me,--Dorothea Sydow and Constance Mühlberg," Countess Brock explained, breathlessly. "H'm! that is magnificent," her friend interposed. "Well, yes; but every one knows them by heart, and I want to show the Berlin folk something new. In short, I have come to the conclusion that the great attraction for my next evening reception must be your enchanting grand-daughter," the 'fairy' declared, wriggling herself out of her seal-skin coat. Erika, who had hitherto kept modestly in the background, occupying herself with some embroidery, here paused, her needle suspended in the air, and looked up curiously. "My grand-daughter?" her grandmother exclaimed, in surprise. "Yes, yes; I have fallen in love with your granddaughter,--actually fallen in love with her. She has a natural air of distinction, with a certain barbaric charm which is immensely aristocratic: it reminds me of some noble wild animal: the aristocracy always reminds me of a noble wild animal, and the bourgeoisie of a well-fed barn-yard fowl,--except that the former is never hunted and the latter never slaughtered. But, then, who can tell, par le temps qui court? Mais je me perds. The matter in hand is not socialism nor any other threatening horror, but my tableaux. There are to be only three,--Senta lost in dreams of the Flying Dutchman, by Constance Mühlberg, Werther's Charlotte, by Thea Sydow, and last your grand-daughter as a heather blossom. She will bear away the palm, of course: the others are not to be compared with her." Countess Lenzdorff looked at Erika and smiled good-naturedly, as she saw how the young girl had gone on sewing diligently as if hearing nothing of this conversation. It never occurred to the old lady that it might not be advisable thus calmly to extol that young person's beauty in her presence. "You will let the child do me this favour, will you not?" the 'fairy' persisted. "It is all admirably arranged. Riedel is to pose them,--you know him,--the little painter with such good manners who has his shirts laundered in Paris." "Oh, that colour-grinder!" Countess Lenzdorff said, contemptuously. The 'fairy' shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "Colour-grinder or not, he is one of the few artists whom one can meet socially." "Yes, yes; and he will find it much easier to arrange a couple of pictures than to paint them," Countess Lenzdorff declared. "Then you consent? I may count upon your grand-daughter?" "I must first consider the matter," Countess Lenzdorff replied, but in a tone which plainly showed that she was not averse to granting her eccentric old friend's request. "I see that affairs look favourable for me," Countess Brock murmured. "Thank heaven! I think I should have killed myself if I had met with a refusal. What o'clock is it?" "Six o'clock,--a few minutes past. Where are you going?" "To dine with the Geroldsteins. We are going to the Lessing Theatre afterwards. There have been no tickets to be had for ten days past." "You--are going to dine with the Geroldsteins?" The old Countess clasped her hands in frank, if discourteous, astonishment. "I am going to dine with the Geroldsteins," the 'wicked fairy' repeated, with irritated emphasis; "and what of it? You have received her for more than a year." "I have no social prejudices. Moreover, I do not receive her: I simply do not turn her out of doors." "Well, at present she suits me," Countess Brock declared, her features working violently. "I have been longing for two months to be present at this first representation, without being able to get a seat: she offers me the best seat in a box,--no, she does not offer it to me, she entreats me to take it as a favour to her. And then think how I begged Goswyn yesterday to introduce G---- to me. No, he would not do it. She will see to all that. She is the most obliging woman in all Germany. And then--this very morning I saw her driving with Hedwig Norbin in the Thiergarten. Surely any one may know a woman with whom Hedwig Norbin drives through the Thiergarten." She ran off, repeating her request as she vanished. "You will let me know your decision to-morrow, Anna?" Countess Lenzdorff shook her head as she looked after her,--shook her head and smiled. She is still smiling as she thoughtfully paces the room to and fro. What is she considering? Whether it is fitting thus, in this barefaced manner, to call the attention of society to a young girl's beauty. Evidently Goswyn does not think it right; but Goswyn is a prig. The Countess's delicacy gives way and troubles her no further. Another consideration occupies her: will her grand-daughter hold her own in comparison with the acknowledged beauties who are to share with her the honours of the evening? Her gaze rests upon Erika. "That crackbrained Elise is right. Erika hold her own beside them! the others cannot compare with her." "What do you say, child?" she asked, approaching the girl. "Would you like to do it?" "Yes," Erika confesses, frankly. "It would not be quite undesirable," says her grandmother, whose mind is entirely made up. "You cannot go out much this year, and it would be something to appear once to excite attention and then to retire to the background for the rest of the season. Curiosity would be aroused, and would prepare a fine triumph for you next year." The following morning Countess Brock received a note from Anna Lenzdorff containing a consent to her request. About ten days afterwards Countess Erika Lenzdorff presented herself before a select public, chosen from the most exclusive society in Berlin, as "Heather Blossom," in a ragged petticoat, with her hair falling about her to her knees. It was a strange soirée, that in which the youthful beauty made her first appearance in the world. Countess Brock, the childless widow of a very wealthy man who had derived much of his social prestige from his wife, had inherited from the deceased the use during her lifetime of a magnificent mansion, together with an income the narrowness of which was in striking contrast with her residence. The consequence whereof was much shabbiness amid brilliant surroundings. The tableaux were given in a spacious ball-room, decorated with white and gold, at one end of which a small stage had been erected. The stage-decorations had been painted for nothing, by aspiring young artists. The curtain consisted of several worn old yellow damask portières sewed together, upon which the 'wicked fairy' herself had painted various fantastic flowers to conceal the threadbare spots. Whatever ridicule might attach to her Thursday evenings generally, on this one her preparations were crowned with success. The effect of the whole was greatly heightened by the musical accompaniment, furnished by G---- at the instigation of the indefatigable Frau von Geroldstein. For once this talented but shy young virtuoso forgot himself, and presented his audience with something more than a pattern-card of conquered technical difficulties. Whether it were the result of caprice, or of a vivid impression made upon him by Erika, or of a presumptuous desire to do all that he could to add to her triumph, thus irritating the acknowledged beauties of the day, certain it is that he played all his musical trumps in his accompaniment to the representation of "Heather Blossom." Old Countess Lenzdorff, who had been wont to compare his clear sharp performance to a richly-furnished cockney drawing-room far too brilliantly lighted, and with gas into the bargain, could scarcely believe her ears when as an introduction to the third picture the low wailing notes of the familiar but lovely melody "Ah, had I never left my moor!" rang through the crowded assemblage of fashionable people. How sweet, how melancholy, were the tones breathed from the instrument! they seemed to rouse an echo in the soul of Boris Lensky's magic violin. The curtain drew up, and revealed a waste, dreary heath, treated with tolerable conventionality by the amiable Riedel, and in the midst of it a single figure, tall, slender, in a worn petticoat and coarse white linen shift that left exposed the nobly-formed neck and the long and as yet rather thin arms, a pale face framed in heavy gleaming masses of hair, the features delicate yet strong, and with unfathomable, indescribable eyes. The painter Riedel had tried to force the Heather Blossom into the attitude of Ary Scheffer's Mignon. She had apparently yielded to his efforts, but at the last moment had posed according to her own wish, with her head bent slightly forward and her arms hanging straight by her side. The audacious simplicity of her pose puzzled the spectators, and those elegant votaries of fashion, weary of counterfeit presentments of art and poetry, were in a manner shaken out of the monotonous indifference of their lives at sight of the blank dumb despair embodied in this young creature. They seemed suddenly to feel among them the working of some mysterious force of nature. The curtain remained lifted for a longer time than usual; the young girl maintained her motionless attitude with a strength born of vanity; the wailing, sighing music sounded on. The curtain fell. The public was wild with enthusiasm. Three times the curtain rose; but when there was a demand for a fourth glimpse of the strange, pathetic picture, it remained obstinately down: Erika had retired. "Oh, the witch!" murmured old Countess Lenzdorff to Hedwig Norbin, who sat beside her. The stupidest and most innocent of country grandmothers could not have exulted more frankly in her grand-daughter's triumph than did the clever Countess Lenzdorff. She was never weary of hearing the child praised: her appetite for compliments was inappeasable. When Erika, transformed and modestly shy in her new gown from Petrus, appeared among the guests, she aroused enthusiasm afresh, and was immediately surrounded. She won the admiration not only of all the men present, but also of all the old ladies. Of course the younger women were somewhat envious, as were likewise the mothers with marriageable daughters. In a word, nothing was lacking to make her appearance a brilliant success. Her grandmother presented her right and left, and was unwearied in describing in whispered confidences to her friends the girl's extraordinary talents and capacity. Any other grandmother so conducting herself would have been called ridiculous, but it was not easy so to stigmatize Anna Lenzdorff; instead there was some irritation excited against the innocent object of such exaggerated praise, the girl herself, to whom various disagreeable traits were ascribed. The younger women pronounced her entirely self-occupied and thoroughly calculating. She was both in a certain degree, but after a precocious, childish fashion, that was diverting, rather than reprehensible. Countess Mühlenberg, the wife of an officer in the guards who did not appreciate her and with whom she was very unhappy, had appeared as Senta out of pure good nature, and held herself quite aloof from Erika's detractors,--in fact, she showed the young débutante much kindness,--but Dorothea Sydow's dislike was almost ill-bred in its manifestation. She was a strangely fascinating and yet repulsive person,--very well born, even of royal blood, a princess, in fact, but so wretchedly poor that she had rejoiced when a simple squire laid his heart and his wealth at her feet. Her family at first cried out against the misalliance, but finally consented to admit that the young lady had done very well for herself. Some of her equals in rank came even to envy her after a while, for all agreed that there was not in the world another husband who so idolized and spoiled his wife, indulging her in every whim, as did Otto von Sydow his Princess Dorothea. He was Goswyn's elder brother, and the heir of the Sydow estates, which was why there was such a difference in the incomes of the brothers. In all else the advantage was decidedly on Goswyn's side. Otto looked like him, but his face lacked the force of Goswyn's; his features were rounder, his shoulders broader, his hands and feet larger, and he had a great deal of colour. The 'wicked fairy' maintained that he showed the blood of his bourgeoise mother. Countess Lenzdorff, who had been an intimate friend of the late Frau von Sydow, denied this, insisting that the Sydow mother had enriched the family not only by her money but also by her pure, strong, red blood. In fact, Otto was a genuine Sydow: such types are not rare among the Prussian country gentry. He was one of the men who always show to most advantage in the country and out of doors, for whom a drawing-room, even the most spacious, is too confined. In a brilliant crowd he looked as if he could hardly catch his breath. With the shyness not unusual in men with much-admired wives, he was wont to efface himself in a corner, emerging to make himself useful at supper-time, and never speaking except when he encountered some one still less at home in society than himself. He was never weary of watching his wife, devouring her with his eyes, drinking in her grace and beauty. Many people declared that she was not beautiful, only distinguished in appearance. In fact, she was both to an astonishing degree, and aristocratic to her finger-tips. Tall, slender almost to emaciation, with long, narrow hands and feet, a head proudly erect, and sharply-cut features, her carriage was inimitable, her walk grace itself. Wherever she went she attracted universal attention. She wore her fair hair short in close curls about her small head, a piece of audacity indeed, and she talked quickly in a rather high voice, and with a slight defect in her utterance, characteristic of the royal family to which she was related, and which made some people nervous, while her countless adorers declared it enchanting. However, beautiful or not, she had been a leader in Berlin society for two years, and would brook no rival near her throne. The evening ran its course; the servants opened the doors into the dining-hall; the ladies took their places at small tables, while the gentlemen served them--the entertainment being but meagre--before satisfying their own appetites. Some of them performed this duty with skill and dexterity, while others rattled plates and glasses and invariably dropped something. Erika, paler than usual, with sparkling eyes and very red lips, sat at a table with a charmingly fresh young girl about her own age, but ten years younger intellectually. Nevertheless the child's development might almost be said to be finished, while Erika's had scarcely passed its first stage. She had honestly tried to talk with this companion, but without success; nor had she much to say to the young men who, attracted by her beauty, thronged around her. Reaction had set in: her enjoyment of her triumph had been succeeded by a strange restlessness. Dorothea von Sydow was sitting near by at a table with one of the most fashionable women in Berlin, an Austrian diplomat, an officer of cuirassiers, and one of her cousins, Prince Helmy Nimbsch. All five had remarkably good appetites and talked incessantly. In their midst sat Frau von Geroldstein, a vacant place on each side of her,--solemn and mute. No one knew her, no one spoke to her, but she was sitting among people of rank and was content. Her only regret was that she had mistaken the continuance of the court mourning by a day, and had consequently appeared in a plain black gown in an assemblage of women in full dress with feathers and diamonds in their hair. To justify her error she had hastily trumped up a story of the death of a near relative. Goswyn's place was with the elder women, a distinction that frequently fell to his share. He looked grave and anxious, and Countess Lenzdorff, who had commanded his presence at her table, with her usual imperiousness, reproached him for being tiresome and bad-tempered. From time to time he glanced towards Erika, of whom he could see nothing save a slender neck with a knot of gold-gleaming hair, a little pink ear, and now and then the outline of a softly-rounded cheek. Yes, she was bewitching, there was no denying it, but she must be insufferable, there was no doubt of that either. The idea of thus making a show of a girl scarcely eighteen! It was in such bad taste: it was absolutely unprincipled: the old Countess, in her senseless vanity, was doing the child a positive injury. At times a kind of rage half choked him: he could have shaken his old friend, to whom he had been as a son, and who had from his boyhood petted him far more than her own child. Again he glanced towards Erika. Then his thoughtful gaze wandered across to the round table where his sister-in-law was sitting. She looked particularly well in a dress of white velvet with an antique Spanish necklace of emeralds around her slender neck. It was all very lovely, but her short hair was not in harmony with it. Beside her sat her cousin, Prince Helmy Nimbsch, a good-tempered dandy, scarcely twenty-five years old, with large light-blue eyes and a face smoothly shaven, except for a moustache. As Goswyn looked at Thea, she was laughing at her cousin over the champagne-glass which she held to her lips. Her eyes were her greatest beauty,--large hazel eyes, but with no soul in them, no expression, not even a bad one. Her charm was entirely physical, but it was very great. It was a pity that her manners were so loud. That perpetual giggle of hers rasped Goswyn's nerves. But he was alone in his dislike: her adorers were legion. He looked away from her. Where was his brother? Over in a corner, at a table without ladies, he was sitting with another gentleman. Fortunately he had found a man who was even more uncomfortable than himself in this brilliant assemblage. This was Herr Geroldstein, husband of the ambitious dame, a pale little man with a bald head and mutton-chop whiskers, who looked for all the world like a man who had wielded a yard-stick behind a counter all his life long,--a decent enough little man, with an air of being perpetually ashamed of himself, who never made use for his own part of the title which he had purchased as a birthday-present for his wife. He spoke very softly and ate and drank but little, while Otto von Sydow did both with great gusto, now and then uttering some oracular remark as to the best wine-merchant in Rheims. His face was redder than usual, and produced the impression of rude health beside the pale tradesman who had passed his life in his office. There was in Goswyn's opinion no denying that no man in the room was as ill fitted to be the husband of the slender Princess Dorothea as was his brother Otto. After supper there was a little music. When Goswyn was relieved from duty with Countess Lenzdorff, he was about to leave the house unnoticed, but longed for one more glimpse of Erika, whom he wished to remember as she looked to-night. "The dew will be brushed off so soon," he said to himself, adding, "Oh, the pity of it!" He could not find her anywhere. "Ah, of course she is surrounded somewhere by a crowd of detestable admirers!" he said to himself, and turned to go. Why he had thus decided that all her admirers were detestable we shall not attempt to explain. The fourth and last in the suite of the 'wicked fairy's' reception-rooms was empty and dimly lighted. He suddenly seemed to hear low suppressed sobs, as he looked in. A red gleam of light played about the folds of a white gown behind a huge effective artificial palm. Involuntarily he advanced a step. There sat Erika, the youthful queen of beauty, whom he had supposed entirely absorbed in receiving the homage of her vassals, curled up in an arm-chair, her handkerchief to her eyes, crying like a tired child. Usually deliberate in thought and action, when once his nerves were irritated he became quick and impetuous. He did not hesitate a moment, but, bending over the girl, exclaimed, "Countess Erika! in heaven's name what is the matter? Can any one have offended you?" His voice grew angry at the bare suspicion. "Ah, no, no!" she sobbed. "Shall I go for your grandmother?" "No--no!" He paused an instant. Then, in a very low and kindly voice, he asked, "Do I annoy you? Would you rather be alone? Shall I go?" She took the handkerchief from her eyes and assured him frankly and cordially, "Oh, no, certainly not: I am glad to have you stay with me," adding, rather shyly, "Pray sit down." Nothing was left of the self-possessed young lady: here was only a little girl dissolved in tears and dreading lest she should seem impolite to a friend of her grandmother's. "She treats me exactly like an old man," the young captain said to himself, at once touched and annoyed; nevertheless he accepted her invitation, and took a seat near her. "It will soon be over," she said, trying to dry her tears. But they would not be dried; they welled forth afresh: she was evidently quite unnerved by the excitement of her début, poor thing! "Oh, heavens," she cried, making a supreme effort to control herself, "I must stop crying! What a disgrace it would be if any of those people should see me!" Apparently there was a great gulf in her mind between Goswyn and "those people." He was glad of it. For a while he was sympathetically silent, and then he said, kindly, "Countess Erika, would you rather keep your sorrow to yourself, or will you confide it to me?" His mere presence had had a soothing effect; her tears ceased to flow; she only shivered slightly from time to time. "Ah, it was not a sorrow," she explained,--"only a distress,--something like what I felt on the night when I first came to Berlin. It was not homesickness,--what have I to be homesick for?--but suddenly I felt so lonely among all those strangers who stared at me curiously but cared nothing for me. I seemed to feel a great chill around me: it all hurt me; their way of speaking, their way of looking down upon everything that was not as fine and proud as themselves, went to my heart. You--you cannot understand it, for you have grown up in the midst of it; you have breathed this air from your childhood." "I think you do me injustice, Countess Erika," he interposed. "I can understand you perfectly, although I have grown up in the midst of it all." "I felt as if I hated the people," she went on, her large melancholy eyes flashing angrily, "and then--then, amidst all this elegance and arrogance,"--she named these characteristics in a perfectly frank way, as if they were elements but lately introduced into her life,--"the thought came to me of the misery in which I grew up, and of all the little pleasures and surprises which my mother prepared for me in spite of our poverty,--ah, such poor little pleasures!--those people would laugh at the idea of any one's enjoying them,--but they were very much to me. Oh, if you knew how my mother used to look at me when she had contrived a new gown for me out of some old rag!--No one will ever look at me so again. And then"--she clinched the hand that held the poor wet handkerchief--"to think that my mother belonged of right to all this bright gay world, and to remember how she died, in what sordid distress, and that it is past,--that I can give her nothing of all that I have---- My heart seemed breaking." She paused, breathless. "Poor Countess Erika!" he murmured, very gently. "It is one of the miseries of this life to remember our dead and to be powerless to be kind to them. All that we can do is to bestow as much love as we can upon the living." "But whom have I to bestow my love upon?" Erika cried, with such an innocent insistence that, in spite of his pity, Goswyn could hardly suppress a smile. "I cannot offer it to my grandmother: she would not know what I meant, and would simply think me ill." "But in fact," he said, now openly amused, "it is not to be supposed that you will all your life have only your grandmother to love." "You mean that----" She looked at him in sudden dismay. "I mean that--that----" The sound of a ritornella drummed upon the piano suddenly fell on their ears, and then came the notes of a thin, clear, expressionless soprano. His sister-in-law was singing. He listened breathless. Just then Countess Lenzdorff with Frau von Norbin appeared. "Ah, here you are, Erika!" she exclaimed. "This I call pretty conduct. I have been looking for you everywhere. H'm! to run away from one's admirers, to be made love to by a young gentleman---- What do you say to it, Hedwig?" This last to Frau von Norbin. "It was only Goswyn," the old lady replied, in her musical-box voice. "Yes, that is an extenuating circumstance," Countess Anna admitted. "And he did not make love to me," Erika assured them. "Indeed? That I take ill of him," Countess Lenzdorff said, with a laugh, while Erika went on with sincere cordiality. "I suddenly felt so lonely and sad, and he was very, very kind to me!" She raised her eyes gratefully to his. "Ah, well----but come now, child; we are going home. I have had quite enough of this.--Adieu, Goswyn." "Perhaps you will permit me to take you home," said Goswyn. "You had much better go in there and put a stop to the mischief which, if I am not mistaken, is being largely added to to-night." This with a significant glance towards the music-room. "I am powerless," Goswyn observed, dryly. He conducted the ladies to the anteroom, where a regiment of lackeys were in waiting. After attending to the old ladies, he had the pleasure of helping Erika to put on her cloak. He had a strange sensation as he wrapped it about the girl's slender figure. The white fur with which it was trimmed was wonderfully becoming to her. "A heather blossom in the snow," the vain grandmother remarked, with a glance in his direction, whereby she discovered that there was no necessity for calling his attention to her grand-daughter's charms. This discovery rejoiced her. She bade him good-night with unusual cordiality, smiling to herself as she descended the brilliantly-lighted staircase. Meanwhile, Goswyn had returned to the music-room. His sister-in-law was still standing by the piano, singing. G---- was accompanying her, good-humouredly ready to burden his soul with any musical misdeed that could give pleasure to his audience, a readiness arising partly from the prosaic view which he took of his "trade," as he was wont to call his music. Quite a little throng of ladies had already rustled out of the room. Countess Brock was beginning to be uneasy. The effect of the Princess's performance vividly reminded her of the effect which the young actor's reading had had upon her guests. Goswyn glanced at his brother. Otto von Sydow was a picture of distress: he looked as if threatened with an apoplectic stroke; he alternately clinched and opened his gloved hands, looked uneasily at the men whom he saw laughing, and at the women whom he saw leaving the room; he stood first on one foot and then on the other; but he allowed his wife to go on singing. The first verses of the music-hall song she had now selected were simply coarse. Goswyn comforted himself with thinking that perhaps she would not sing the last. He had underrated his sister-in-law's temerity. She went on. Sight and hearing seemed to fail him. Suddenly there came a loud burst of applause. A few of the men present, in pity for the unhappy husband, had thus drowned the improprieties of the last verse. Princess Dorothea looked round,--saw men laughing significantly and women hurriedly leaving the room. She grew pale, and there came into her Spanish face a look of indescribable hardness. She was about to continue, when her hostess approached her. "Charming!" exclaimed the 'fairy,'--"charming, my dear Thea, but you must not exert yourself further: you are a little hoarse." It was too unequivocal. Princess Dorothea understood. Her assumed gaiety took another turn. "I have a sudden longing for a dance!" she exclaimed. "G----, play us a waltz: we will extemporize a ball." G---- began to play with immense spirit one of Strauss's waltzes, when a gray-haired old General raised his voice,--a clear, sharp voice,--and said, "It would be a little difficult to extemporize a ball, for, with the exception of the hostess, your Excellency is the only lady present." Dorothea grew paler still, held herself rather more erect than usual, threw back her head, and smiled. Just thus, deadly pale, hard, erect and smiling, Goswyn was to see her once again in his life, a couple of years later, when all her world was pointing at her the finger of scorn. "You will let me drive Helmy home, will you not, Otto?" Dorothea asked in the hall, where she was holding a kind of little court amid her admirers, a yellow lace scarf wound around her head, and a black velvet wrap about her shoulders. "Helmy has such a cold, and there is no finding a droschky at this hour." Involuntarily Goswyn, who was just buckling on his sabre, paused to listen to this little speech of his fascinating sister-in-law's, uttered in the tenderest tone. He had no idea that his brother had anything to fear from Prince Helmy: this was only Dorothea's way of escaping any admonition from her husband. If Otto did not scold on the spot he never scolded at all. There really was nothing objectionable in her driving home alone with her cousin, but then---- She laid her little hand on her husband's breast as she spoke: the gentlemen around her looked on. Without waiting to hear his brother's reply, Goswyn left the house. He had gone but two or three steps in the street when some one joined him: it was Otto. "Have you a light?" he asked, in a rather uncertain voice. Goswyn struck a match for him, and paused in silence while his brother lighted his cigar with unnecessary effort. "I am really very glad to walk," said Otto, keeping pace with his brother. "Thea cannot bear to have me smoke in the coupé." Goswyn was silent. "I know Thea through and through," Otto continued: "she is as innocent as a child, but a little imprudent; and then all those starched, stiff-necked Berlin women cannot forgive her for being more fascinating and original than the whole of them together. And, after all, what harm was there in her singing those songs? It was easy enough to see that she did not understand what she was singing, or at least did not think. The purest women are always the most imprudent. These people do not understand her. They admire her,--no one can help that,--but they do not appreciate her. When she saw that she was shocking those Philistines she sang on out of sheer bravado. It was perhaps not wise to brave public opinion." Each time that Otto von Sydow had broken the thread of his discourse in hopes that Goswyn would assent to his view of the situation, he had been disappointed. His brother was persistently mute. Otto's footsteps sounded louder, his breath came more heavily; Goswyn, who knew him thoroughly, saw that he was struggling against an access of rage. For a while he maintained a silence like his brother's; then, pausing, he addressed Goswyn directly: "Do you find anything to blame in my allowing my wife to drive home alone with a cousin who is not well, and who may thereby be saved a fit of illness,--a cousin, too, with whom her relations have always been those of a sister?" Goswyn shrugged his shoulders. "Since you ask me, I must speak the truth," he replied. "On this particular evening I think it would have been wiser for you to drive home tête-à-tête with your wife than to let her go with young Nimbsch." Otto's breathing became still more audible; he stamped his foot, and, before Goswyn could look round, had turned off into a side-street with a sullen "good-night." He was greatly to be pitied: he had hoped that Goswyn would comfort him, but Goswyn had not comforted him. "He never understood her, and therefore never liked her," he muttered between his teeth. "He is the worst Philistine of all." And then he recalled Goswyn's persistent opposition to his marriage with the Princess Dorothea, how passionately--for Goswyn, calm as he seemed, could be passionate--he had entreated his brother not to propose to her. "A blind man could see how unfitted you are for each other: you will be each other's ruin!" he had said. The words rang in his ears now with vivid distinctness. It was about two o'clock in the morning: the streets were dim, deserted. At intervals of a hundred steps the reddish lights of the street-lamps were reflected from the brown muddy surface of the asphalt. From time to time a carriage casting two bluish rays of light before it shot past Otto with an unnaturally loud rattle in the dull silence. The windows of the houses were all dark and quiet, except where from one open building came the muffled notes of some light popular airs: it was a cheap kind of music-hall. Involuntarily Sydow listened: something in the faint melody commanded his attention. They were playing the music of the very song his wife had sung but now. His wretchedness was intolerable; his limbs seemed weighed down with fatigue. "Pshaw! it is this confounded thaw," he said to himself. In his ears rang the words, "You are utterly unfitted for each other." What if Goswyn had been right, after all? Good God! No one could have resisted her. They had met first in Florence. The two brothers had made a tour through Italy just after Otto's attaining his majority. They travelled together so far as that means having the same starting-point and the same goal, but each followed his own devices, stopping where he liked, so that sometimes they did not meet for a long while. While Goswyn underwent all kinds of inconveniences for the sake of visiting many interesting little towns in Northern Italy, Otto, whose first requirement was a good hotel, went directly from Venice to Florence. He had been there for five days, and was terribly bored; he missed Goswyn. Although Otto was the elder of the two, he had always been in the habit of letting Goswyn think for him. Old Countess Lenzdorff maintained that when they were children she had often heard him ask, "Goswyn, am I cold?" "Goswyn, am I hungry?" He had carried with him through life a certain sense of dependence upon his younger brother, looking to him for help in every difficulty, for support in every sorrow. He had no acquaintances in Florence, the food was not to his taste, the wine was poor, the beds, in which so many had slept before him, disgusted him, the theatres did not edify him. He took no pleasure in the opera; he was thoroughly--and for a German remarkably--devoid of a taste for music; and the Italian drama he did not understand. Consequently he found his evenings intolerably long: he spoke no Italian, and very little French. Since there were no Germans in the hotel save those with whom, in spite of his homesickness, he did not choose to consort, he led a very lonely life. And, as he took not the slightest interest in art, it was no wonder that on the fifth day of his sojourn in Florence he declared such an "Italian course of culture" the "veriest mockery of pleasure in which a Prussian country nobleman could indulge." The queerest thing was that Goswyn seemed to be enjoying himself so much. He received delighted post-cards from him from all kinds of little out-of-the-way places of which Otto had never before even heard the names, not even when he studied geography at school, and he seemed entirely independent of discomfort as to his lodgings in his enjoyment of all that "art-stuff," as Otto expressed it to himself. One afternoon in the cathedral, in an access of most depressing ennui, he was sauntering from one shrine to another, when he suddenly heard a sigh. He looked round. A young girl in a large Vandyke hat and a dark cloth dress trimmed with silver braid had just seated herself in one of the chairs, and was opening a yellow-covered novel. Everything about her, her hat, her dress, as well as her own striking figure, gave an impression of distinction, although of distinction somewhat down in the world. She was very young, and yet did not seem at all affected by her loneliness. Before long she noticed that Otto was observing her, and she bestowed a scornful glance upon him over the pages of her book. He instantly flushed crimson, and turned away, feeling very uncomfortable. Then in the twilight silence of the spacious church, always deserted at this hour of the day, he heard a delicate insinuating voice call, "Feistmantel, dear!" Involuntarily he looked round: it was the slender girl in the chair who had called. He then observed hurrying towards her a short, stout individual in a striped gray-and-black water-proof with an opera-glass in a strap,--a wonderful creature, whom he had noticed before strolling about the church, but without an idea that she had anything to do with the attractive occupant of the chair. "Feistmantel, dear." "Princess!" "I am so hungry. Have you not seen enough of those stupid old relics?" And the girl yawned, sighed, and rubbed her eyes. "Oh, pray, Princess!" Both ladies then walked to the door of exit, where they paused dismayed. It was raining in torrents, that steady downpour that gives no hope of any speedy cessation. "This is intolerable!" exclaimed the young girl, in her insinuating and now melancholy voice, and with a slight imperfection of speech which struck kindly, awkward Sydow as something too charming ever to be forgotten. "Insufferable! We cannot put our skirts over our heads, like female pilgrims." "Pray permit me to call a droschky for you." With these words the young Prussian approached the pair; then when the girl measured him from head to foot with a half-merry, half-haughty stare, he added, with a bow, by way of explanation, "Von Sydow." The ladies bowed without finding it necessary to mention their names, and the younger said, with her bewitching voice and imperfection of speech, "You will greatly oblige us if you will be so kind as to take the trouble." And in fact it was a trouble. It is difficult to withstand the insistence of Italian droschky-drivers in fine weather, when one wishes to walk, but to find a droschky in bad weather, when one wishes to drive, is more difficult still. When he at last succeeded he feared to find that the ladies had left in despair at the delay; but no, there they were still, the companion in the striped waterproof with her face shining with the rain which had drenched it as she stretched her neck to see if he were coming, and her curls dangling limp in damp disorder; the girl more bewitching than ever, her cheeks slightly flushed by the fresh damp breeze, and evidently exhilarated in mind, flattered by her conquest. She had grown gracious, and she smiled her thanks, as she hurried into the carriage, lifting her skirts to avoid wetting them, and thereby displaying a pair of the prettiest little feet imaginable. "What address shall I give to the coachman?" he asked, after helping the ladies to ensconce themselves in the vehicle. "Hôtel Washington." He had no umbrella; he was wet to the skin, and the day was cold. But that was of no consequence. Otto von Sydow had never felt so warm since he had been in Italy. That very evening he moved to the Hôtel Washington from the Hôtel de la Paix. Since the entire first floor was occupied by a banker from Vienna, and the hotel was overcrowded, the room assigned him was far from comfortable; but he did not mind that. And that very evening, before the table-d'hôte dinner, he found his fair one. She was in the reading-room, reading a Paris paper. He also learned who she was,--Princess Dorothea von Ilm. She was an orphan, and very poor. The family, originally distinguished, had degenerated sadly, principally through the dissipated habits of the Princess's two brothers, notably through the marriage of the elder to a French circus-rider. Since her installation in Castle Egerstein the Princess Dorothea had been homeless, and had been wandering about the world with very little means and a companion who was half instructress, half maid. This individual, whom Prince Ilm had hurriedly engaged for his sister through a newspaper advertisement, was named Alma Feistmantel, and came from Vienna, where she belonged to those æsthetic circles, the members of which interest themselves chiefly for artists and the drama. For ten years she had cherished a hopeless passion for Sonnenthal: her chief enthusiasms were for broad-shouldered men, Wagner's music, and novels which exalted "the sacred voice of nature." Under the protection of this lady the Princess Dorothea had for three years been completing her education in Vienna, Rome, and Paris successively. The Princess enlightened her admirer as to her affairs with the greatest candour, informing him that her brother had treated her shamefully, but that it was all the fault of the circus-rider, who could make him do just as she chose; and in spite of it all Willy was the most fascinating creature imaginable: he looked like a Spaniard. Sydow remembered him: he had served a year in the same regiment with him during his term of compulsory service. With equal frankness Princess Dorothea explained that she was often embarrassed pecuniarily; once she had been so pinched that she had sold her dog to an Englishman for three hundred francs; she had hated to part with him, for she never had loved any creature as she did that dog, but she needed a ball-dress to wear at an entertainment in Rome at the German embassy. Her aunt, Princess Nimbsch, had chaperoned her when she went into society: sometimes she went, and sometimes she did not; it depended upon her circumstances. In fact, she did not care much about going into society, it prevented you from doing so many amusing things; you could not go to the little theatres, where the funniest farces were played. Therefore she preferred to be in Paris, where not a soul knew her, and she and Feistmantel could go everywhere together. Feistmantel had frequently during these confessions admonished the Princess to greater discretion by a touch of her foot beneath the table: of one of these hints Sydow's boot had been the recipient. But when she found that she could thus make no impression upon her charge the Viennese interposed with some temper: "Pray, Baron Sydow, discount all this talk some fifty per cent. You must not believe that I would take any young girl intrusted to my care where it was not proper that she should go." "I know nothing about proper or improper: I only know what is amusing and what is tiresome," the Princess said, with a laugh, "and we went everywhere. Feistmantel is putting on airs because of my exalted family, but do not you believe her, Herr von Sydow. We saw 'Ma Camarade,' and 'Niniche,' and we even went one evening to the Café des Ambassadeurs. Eh?" And she pinched her companion's ear. "But, Baron Sydow, do not allow yourself to be imposed upon," Feistmantel exclaimed, almost beside herself. "The Café des Ambassadeurs,--why, that is a café chantant. There is not a word of truth in all her nonsense." "Not true? oh, but it is," the Princess retorted, quite at her ease. "Of course it was a café chantant, and the singer sang 'Estelle, où est ta flanelle?'--it was too funny; but I can sing it just like her. I practised it that very evening. I must sing it to you some day, Herr von Sydow,--that is, when we are better acquainted. Oh, is there no café chantant in Florence to which you could take us?" "But, Princess----!" exclaimed Feistmantel. "Why, a gentleman took us to the Café des Ambassadeurs, a man whose acquaintance we made in the hotel," Dorothea ran on. "He was an American,--a Mr. Higgs: he came from Connecticut, and dealt in cheeses. He was very rich, and he sent us tickets for the theatre. Afterwards he wanted to marry me: I liked him very well, and would have accepted him, but my brother said he was no match for me. Well, I did not break my heart, but I should have liked to marry him for all that. We Princesses Ilm have the right, it is true, to marry crowned heads, but I never mean to avail myself of it. If I were an Empress I should always travel incognito. As soon as I am of age I shall marry a chimney-sweeper--if he is a millionaire, or if I fall in love with him." "Both contingencies seem highly probable," Sydow observed, laughing. It was the only remark he allowed himself during the conversation,--a conversation which took place in the reading-room of the Washington Hotel on the first evening of his stay there. After the Princess had finished her confessions, she went to the window, and looked out upon the Arno. For a while she was perfectly silent; but when Alma Feistmantel, recovering from her dismay, began to invent all sorts of falsehoods with which to impress Sydow, Dorothea quietly turned to him and said, "Herr von Sydow, will you not take a walk with us? Florence is so lovely at night!" The next day he drove with the ladies to Fiesole. He sat on the front seat of a very uncomfortable droschky and felt as happy as a king. It was the middle of April, and an upright crest of white and purple iris crowned the white wall bordering the crooked road leading to the famous old town. Here and there the rose-bushes trailed their blossoming branches in the dust. Barefooted Italian children, with dishevelled hair and glowing eyes tossed nosegays into the carriage and offered their straw wares to the ladies with persistent entreaties to buy. How many liri and fifty-centesimi pieces Sydow threw away on that wonderful day! The more he gave the rein to his liberality the longer grew the train of children, laughing, gesticulating, all pretty, with light in their eyes and flowers in their hands. Suddenly the driver shouted to some one who would not get out of the way. Sydow sprang out of the droschky and saw creeping along the dusty road a pair of wretched beggars, old and bent, their weary feet wrapped in rags. The sight of anything so miserable on the lovely spring day cut him to the heart. He could do no less than toss them some money. Alma Feistmantel, as a member of the society for the suppression of mendicancy, lectured him for his lavish alms, and the Princess laughed at the beggars, whose misery struck her as comical. She flung a sneering "Baucis and Philemon!" after them. This shocked Sydow for an instant; the next he gave her a kindly glance, saying to himself, "Ah, she is but a child!" He was already incapable of finding any harm in her. The next morning the German clerk of the hotel came to him, and, after some circumlocution, asked him if he were intimately acquainted with the Princess. Quite confused, and without a suspicion of the clerk's motive in asking, he explained that his acquaintance with her was of the most superficial kind. The clerk suppressed a smile beneath his bearded lip. Sydow was sorely tempted to knock him down, and was restrained only by regard for the Princess's reputation. It appeared, however, that the clerk's question was not the result of impertinent curiosity; he had no interest in the young Prussian's relations to the fair Princess, he only wished to discover whether Sydow knew anything of her family,--if she were a genuine Princess, and if they were people of wealth. She was travelling without a maid, and had not paid her hotel bill for a month. Whereupon Sydow snubbed the clerk sharply, informing him that he need be under no anxiety, the Ilms were among the first families of Germany. The Princess had simply forgotten to pay, supposing it to be a matter of small importance. The clerk was profuse in apologies. Sydow spent three hours considering how he should offer his aid to the Princess. At last--it was raining, and the ladies were at home--he knocked at their door. "Who is it?" Feistmantel's harsh voice inquired. "Sydow." "Oh, pray come in," called the high voice of the Princess. He entered. It was a small room in the third story. Feistmantel was sitting by the window, mending some article of dress; the Princess was sitting on her bed, reading "Autour du Mariage," by Gyp. The Princess moved no farther than to offer him her hand with a charming smile; Feistmantel cleared off the articles from an arm-chair, that he might sit down. "Oh, what a dreary day! I am so glad you are come! We are nearly bored to death," said Dorothea, rubbing her eyes, and gathering her feet under her so that she sat cross-legged on the bed. "Can you give me a cigarette? mine are all gone." Feistmantel said something in disapproval of a lady's smoking, when Dorothea remarked, composedly, "Don't listen to her; she is putting on airs again because of my exalted family, when the fact is that it was from her that I learned to smoke. Oh, what a wretched world! 'Who but ducks and pumps can keep out of the dumps, in a world that is never dry?' Oh, I am so bored,--so bored!" She stretched herself slightly. "I should like at least to go to Doney's and get an ice, but we cannot; we have no money." Then Sydow blurted out the little speech he had composed with infinite pains, coming to a stand-still three times during the recital. He had heard that the ladies had been expecting remittances from Germany. Of course there was some mistake: would they permit him to relieve them--from--their temporary embarrassment? He paused in great confusion. Would they turn him out of the room? No! The Princess simply held out her hands and exclaimed, "You are an angel! I could really embrace you!" which of course she did not do, but which she could have done without thinking much of it. That same evening the Princess's bill was paid. Two days later Goswyn arrived in Florence. He surprised his brother at dinner with Dorothea and Feistmantel at a small table at the extreme end of a long close dining-room, beside a window looking out upon the Arno. The Princess was giggling and chatting in her clear high voice, which could be heard outside of the dining-hall; she wore a white dress, and a diamond ring sparkled upon her hand. At first Goswyn smiled at his brother's charming travelling acquaintances, but in a very little while the state of affairs made him grave. Of course he took his place at the table with the three. The Princess instantly began to flirt with him. First she congratulated herself that they were now a partie carrée; it was very jolly; until then Herr von Sydow had cut but a sorry figure between two ladies, now they could be taken for two couples on a wedding-tour. Then, planting both elbows upon the table, she leaned across to Goswyn and asked, "Which of the gentlemen will appropriate Feistmantel?" "That is for the ladies to decide," Goswyn replied, laughing. "Then my guardian spirit shall fall to your lot," said Dorothea, "for I prefer your brother. I perceived the instant that you appeared that you are a very disagreeable fellow, Herr Goswyn von Sydow," pronouncing the name with mock pathos,--"yes, a thoroughly disagreeable fellow. I could not live with you three days; while I could endure a lifetime with your brother. He is such an honest, clumsy bear: I have always had a liking for bears. Look, he gave me this ring as a keepsake: is it not pretty?" Otto von Sydow long remembered the look which his brother gave the ring. That evening the brothers had a violent dispute. Goswyn admitted that the Princess was charming in spite of her wretched training and impossible behaviour; that there could not be a more amusing transient travelling acquaintance; that, finally, she certainly did come of very good stock, and was, in spite of her free and easy style of conversation, a pure-minded woman,--which should make it still more a matter of conscience with Otto not to compromise her as he was doing; for a marriage with her, even although her poor but haughty family could be brought to consent to the misalliance, was out of the question. The result of this conversation was that Otto at last hung his head and admitted that his wiser, stronger brother was right; he promised to leave Florence with Goswyn the next morning; but when the trunks were all piled on the coach for their departure he met the Princess Dorothea on the stairs, and did not leave, but stayed and was betrothed to her. It would be doing her injustice to say that she married him solely for his money. No, she really had a decided liking for "bears," and, as far as she could love any one, she loved her big, clumsy husband, just as she preferred brown bread and sour milk to all the delicacies of the table. During the honey-moon, which she spent with Otto upon his estate in Silesia, she developed an astonishing degree of tenderness, but she could not love anything for any length of time. Then, too, she was entirely unused to any regular life, and the dull routine at Kosnitz soon bored her to death. At first it delighted her to revel in her husband's wealth, to have dress after dress made, to adorn herself with all sorts of trinkets; but she soon found it tiresome and monotonous. Oh for a small room on the third floor of some hotel in Paris with Feistmantel, and poverty, and liberty, and a fresh conquest every day! how she longed for it all! At first in Berlin, in honour of her husband, she had assumed the conventional air of a great lady; but of that she soon became desperately tired: it was the most wearisome of all the weariness in her new life. In spite of all that evil tongues might say of her, she was as yet perfectly innocent: of that her husband was convinced. "She is utterly unsusceptible,--utterly," he said to himself, as he tramped home through the mud and wet. And with this poor consolation he was obliged to be content. But, slow-witted as he was, he was aware that women unsusceptible to temptation are apt to be equally unsusceptible to the disgrace of a fall. The matter is simply of no importance to them. Princess Dorothea would never be led astray through passion; but at the thought of the devouring, degrading ennui which was continually dragging her downward, Otto von Sydow shuddered. Suddenly his cheeks burned; he could have boxed his own ears for such thoughts with regard to his wife. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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