"Oh! Uncle Klinger!" she exclaimed. "Mamma is waiting for me, I dare say!--but do not scold me, I entreat you--."
Thank G.o.d for those happy innocent eyes that looked so frankly into his!--On purity like hers Scirocco could have no power! No--he could not be angry with her.--But _he_!
"Sempaly!" cried the old man indignantly: "What possesses you?"
"I have at length made up my mind to be happy," said Sempaly with feeling, and he raised Zinka"s hand to his lips. "That is all."
"And I ought not to have forgiven him so easily--ought I?" murmured Zinka, quailing at the general"s stern frown, and her head drooped.
"Zinka has been missed, you know how spiteful people are!" exclaimed von Klinger angrily, ignoring the sentimentality of the situation.
Sempaly interrupted him with vehement irritation.
"What I should like to do," he said half to himself, "is to go straight back to the ball-room, and tell my most intimate friends at once of our engagement!" But even as he spoke he reconsidered the matter; "but I cannot," he went on, "unfortunately I cannot. I must even entreat you, Zinka, to keep it a secret even from your own household."
"Come, at once, with me," said the general drily, "my carriage is waiting in the Piazza. If I am not mistaken there is a little gate here which leads on to it... Yes, here it is. I will tell your mother, so that others shall hear it, that you felt ill and left before the cotillon began and that Lady Julia took you home."
When Zinka was safely on her way to the palazetto in charge of the general"s trusty old coachman, the two men looked each other in the face.
"Outrageous!" growled the general furiously. Sempaly turned upon him quickly:
"Think what you will of me," he said, "but do not let the shadow of a suspicion rest on Zinka. You know that if you hold up a cross to the devil himself, his power is quelled."
Without answering a word the general hurried past Sempaly and straight into the ball-room; but he found time to lock behind him the alcove door leading into the garden. In the ball-room he was met by the baroness who anxiously asked him:
"Where is Zinka? have you seen Zinka?"
"Zinka felt shaken and upset by her fall--she went away a long time since, with Lady Julia who took her home."
He spoke very distinctly and in French, so that several persons who were standing near might hear him. "She might have let me know,"
exclaimed the baroness peevishly.
"We looked for you, but could nowhere find you," said the general.
Never in his life before had he told a lie.
At some unearthly hour next morning he called on Lady Julia to confide to her the mystery of the night"s adventure, that she might not contradict his story; as he had actually put Zinka into her carriage there seemed to be no other danger. Though she disliked the falsehood as much as he did, she was quite ready to confirm the fiction; at the same time she could not help saying again and again:
"Poor little thing! I hope it may all come right!"
CHAPTER III.
"Dearest Zinka, my own sweet little love,
"My brother arrived in Rome last night; he is on his way to Australia and I am thankful to say stays only a few days. So long as he is here I must make every sacrifice and hardly see you at all, for he must know nothing of our engagement. Now, shall I tell you the real sordid reason why I cannot speak to him of my happiness?--during these last few miserable weeks, simply and solely to kill the time, I have gambled and have always been unlucky, and I have got deeply into debt. My brother will pay, as he always has done, so long as the conditions remain unchanged. But ... however, it is not a matter to write about. Believe this much only: that his narrow views can never affect my feelings towards you; though I may seem to yield, for I think it useless to provoke his antagonism. As soon as he has sailed there will be nothing in the way of our engagement and we will be married immediately. To an accomplished fact he must surrender. If I possibly can, I will see you this evening at the palazetto--just to have one kiss and a loving word.
Till then I can only implore you to keep this absolutely secret.
"Your perfectly devoted
"N.S."
This was the note that Zinka received the morning after the ball, as she was breakfasting alone in her own room, rather later than usual, but with a convalescent appet.i.te. The color mounted to her cheeks, and her eyes flashed indignantly. Coldness and neglect she had borne--but the meanness and weakness--the moral cowardice--that this note betrayed, degraded him in her eyes till she almost scorned him. She felt as though a sudden glare had shown her the real Sempaly--as though the man she loved was not he, but some one else. The man she had loved was a lofty young G.o.d who had chosen to descend from his high estate to break the heart of an insignificant girl who ought to have thought herself happy only to have gazed upon him; but this was a boneless, nerveless mortal, who could stoop to petty subterfuge for fear of having to face the wrath of his brother.
She was furious; all the pride that had been crushed into silence by her dejection was roused to arms. She went to her desk and wrote as follows:
"I am prepared to marry you in defiance of your brother"s will, but I could never think of becoming your wife behind his back. I am ready to defy him, but I do not choose to cheat him. It is of no use to come to the house this evening unless you are quite clear on this point. I could not think of marrying you unless I were perfectly sure that I was more indispensable to your happiness than your brother"s good will. You must therefore consider yourself released from every tie, and regard the words you spoke yesterday in a moment of excitement as effaced from my memory. Ever yours,
"Zinka Sterzl."
Zinka enclosed this peremptory note in an envelope, addressed it, rang for her maid and desired her to have it sent immediately to the Palazzo di Venezia.
"And shall I say there is an answer?" asked the girl.
"No," said Zinka shortly.
No sooner had the maid gone on her errand than the hapless Zinka felt utterly wretched and almost repented of having written so indignantly... She might have said all that was in the note without expressing herself so bitterly. She thought the words over, knit her brows, shook her head--and at that moment her eye fell on another letter which had been brought to her with Sempaly"s, and which she had forgotten to open. She saw that the writing was Truyn"s. She hastily read the note which was a short one.
"Dear Zinka:--My poor little girl has been much worse and the doctor gives me very little hope. She constantly asks for you, both when she is conscious and in her delirium. Come to her if you can. Your old friend,
"Truyn."
"P. S. It is nothing catching--inflammation of the lungs."
Zinka started up--she forgot everything--her happiness, her grief, Sempaly himself--remembering only Truyn"s indefatigable kindness and the sorrow that threatened him.
"Nothing catching...." she repeated to herself: "poor man! he thinks of others even now--it is just like him. While I ... I?" She colored deeply, for she recollected how that evening the child had sat shivering by her side and she had not noticed it.
"I had my head turned by a kind word from him...." she thought vexed with her own folly.
In a very few minutes she was hurrying across the Corso towards the Piazza di Spagna. Her maid had some difficulty in keeping up with her.
Zinka almost flew, heeding nothing and looking at no one, till, in the Piazza di Spagna, she came upon a group of persons coming out of the Hotel de Londres and felt a light hand on her arm. Looking round she saw Nini.
"Good-morning. Where are you off to in such a hurry?" asked the young countess pleasantly.
"Good-morning," said Zinka hastily, "I am in a great hurry--I am going to the Hotel de l"Europe; Gabrielle Truyn is very ill--she wants to see me."
But at this moment Zinka perceived a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a very handsome face and haughty expression, standing close to Nini. He was gazing at her with perfectly well-bred admiration, and Nini introduced him as Prince Sempaly. Then she saw that Nicklas Sempaly was just behind, with Polyxena. His eyes met hers with a pa.s.sionate flash, but he only bowed with distant formality. Zinka had no time to think about his manner, she was hardly conscious of his presence--all she felt was that she was being detained.
"You must excuse me," she said, smiling an apology to Nini and shaking hands warmly with her without stopping to think of the formalities of caste. "Poor Count Truyn is expecting me." And she hurried on again.