Stella is silent.
"It never occurred to him to originate the report," Edmund interposes now, rather irritably; "he was merely too lazy to contradict it. To hear you talk, Therese, one would suppose Edgar to be the most self-conceited c.o.xcomb under the sun,--a man who spent his life in defending himself from the attacks of matrimonially-inclined ladies.
But I a.s.sure you, Baroness Stella, that Edgar has not a trace of such nonsensical c.o.xcombry. Perhaps you know him well enough to make your own estimate of his character."
"I know him very superficially," Stella replies, with a shrug.
"Why, I thought you spent several weeks last summer with him at Leskjewitsch"s," says Rohritz, looking at her in surprise.
Without making any reply to this remark, Stella opens and shuts her fan, and says, with a slight curl of her lip, "His heroic opposition seems overcome at last; for, as I learned lately from a letter from Gratz, he has just been betrothed to a certain little Countess Strahlheim."
"Who wrote you so?" Therese cries. "That interests me immensely! Oh, the Machiavelli!"
"I had the intelligence from a Fraulein von Gurlichingen," says Stella.
"Gurlichingen? Anastasia Gurlichingen?" asks the Baron.
"You know the Gurlichingen?" Stella asks, in her turn.
"Know her! Who does not know the Gurlichingen?" says Rohritz. "She is the most restless phantom I have ever encountered, continually fluttering to and fro through the world, always in the train of some wealthy friend who pays her expenses. It has been her specialty hitherto to sacrifice herself for consumptive ladies: she has haunted Meran, Cairo, Corfu. There was no taint of legacy-hunting in her conduct,--heaven forbid such a suspicion! Hm! my brother-in-law Zino christened her the turkey-buzzard. If you owe your piece of news to no more trustworthy source of information, Baroness Stella, I must take the liberty of doubting its correctness."
"You know she is in Paris? She called upon me a little while ago, but I was not at home," said Therese, turning to Stella. "Have you any idea whom she is with now?"
"With the Princess Oblonsky," Stella replies.
"With the Oblonsky? Not with the former von Fohren?" husband and wife exclaim simultaneously.
"Certainly!"
"What a joke!--with the Oblonsky!"
Therese almost chokes with laughter.
It is ten o"clock. The children have long since disappeared with their _bonne_; the servant has brought in the tea-equipage. There is a pause in the conversation, such as is apt to ensue when people have laughed until they are tired. The Baron puts a fresh log on the fire and rakes the embers together. The blaze flames and crackles; little hovering lights and shadows dance over the old golden-brown leather tapestries.
Suddenly the door opens, and unannounced, with the _sans gene_ of close relationship, a young man enters the room, tall, slender, with a certain attractive audacity expressed in the lines about his mouth and in his eyes which puts beyond question his resemblance to the Olympian dandy. It is the Apollo of modern drawing-room dimensions, the Apollo forty-four years old, already a little gray about the temples, with a wrinkle or two at the corners of his eyes, in a coat of Poole"s, a gardenia in his b.u.t.ton-hole, his crush hat under his arm,--Prince Zino Capito!
"Pray present me," he says, after he has greeted his sister, and Stella also, turning towards the Baroness.
"And you already know my new star?" Therese exclaims, in surprise, after she has fulfilled his request.
The Prince looks full at Stella, with a look peculiar to himself, a look in which admiration reaches the boundary of impertinence without crossing it,--then says, smiling,--
"_ca_, Sasa!" when he is in a good humour he calls his sister thus, by the name which he gave her when he was a lisping baby in the nursery,--"_ca_, Sasa, do you really suppose that I would have rushed back from Lyons simply on the strength of the enthusiastic description of your latest _trouvaille_ that you sent me in your note of invitation? No, my little sister, I am too well aware of your liability to acute attacks of enthusiasm not to receive your brilliant perorations with a justifiable mistrust. I once had the pleasure of seeing Mademoiselle very often, for a while," he continues, speaking French.
"Where?--when?" asks Therese.
"Three years ago, in Venice. Baron Meineck lived at the Britannia, where I also lodged, and Fraulein Stella came to Venice to take care of him.--They were sad days for you," he says, turning to Stella, very gravely, and with a degree of cordiality which he can impart to his voice when he chooses.
"And yet they were delightful days for me in spite of all," Stella replies, her eyes full of tears, and turning away her head.
"Most certainly you can look back to that time with a contented heart,"
he continues, in the same sympathetic tone. "I never have seen a daughter----" Suddenly he notices how the Baroness"s glance rests upon him, and, becoming aware of the delicate nature of the situation, he finishes his sentence as best he can and tries to change the subject.
But the Baroness has lost her equanimity: it is always intensely painful to her to know that she recalls to strangers the fact that her husband in his last illness was obliged to forego her care; Capito"s words are like a reproof to her.
"Will you have the kindness to have a fiacre called for us?" she says, turning to the host.
Resisting all entreaties to prolong her stay, and to take another cup of tea, she pleads fatigue, the necessity of rising early, and so forth. When Capito takes leave of her he asks permission to pay his respects to the ladies.
But the Baroness begs him to give himself no further trouble with regard to them, as she is scarcely ever at home,--whereupon she vanishes on the arm of the host, and the Prince twirls his moustache with a comical grimace.
"What annoys you, Zino?" Edmund asks on his return to the smoking-room; and when the Prince enlightens him as to the extent of his lack of tact, and the unfortunate family history of the Meinecks, he says,--
"I really do not see why Edgar considered it necessary to prepare us so carefully for the absurdities of the old Baroness. It is quite possible that she drove her husband distracted with her learning: nevertheless in ordinary intercourse she is very agreeable, and a very handsome old lady: she must have been handsomer in her time than her daughter."
"Do you think so?" asks Therese. "To me Stella seems charming."
"_Elle est tout betement adorable_," says Zino Capito, drinking his tea out of the j.a.panese cup his sister has just handed him. "How good your tea is, Sasa! in all Paris no one has such good tea as yours."
"You are very suspiciously complimentary," Therese rejoins. "What do you want me to do for you?"
"Ask me to dine soon, and ask the Meinecks," Zino replies, with his attractively audacious smile.
"No, I will not," Therese says, resolutely.
"And why not?"
"Because, as I now see, you would do all that you could to turn Stella"s brain. I thought you had outgrown such foolish tricks."
"Hm!" says Capito.
"I am going to do all that I can to marry her well," Therese declares.
"Hm!" Capito says again, but in a different tone.
"If you like, I will invite you to meet the Gurlichingen; she is in Paris at present."
"Indeed! With whom is she travelling?
"With----" Therese looks full at him, with mirth in her eyes,--"with the Oblonsky!"
"Ah! Have her lungs become affected lately?" Zino asks, indifferently.
"Not that I know of; but she probably covets respectability," says Therese.
"_Ah, tiens! cela doit etre drole_. An entire change of system on Stasy"s part, then," says Zino, putting down his teacup, and rising.
"She seems to have abandoned the lucrative calling of a turkey-buzzard," Rohritz remarks.
"Yes, and instead to have opened a laundry for the purification of--caps which have fallen among--among nettles, in the vicinity of mills.[1] Not a bad trade,--hm!"