"As if I could remember all the faces I saw in our house when I was a little boy, before I was sent away to the military academy. I didn"t keep an alb.u.m of them,--the Rideghvarys and all the other varys."
Jeno tried to draw his brother aside where they would not be overheard. "You must know," said he, "that Rideghvary is a very influential man."
"What is that to me?" asked the other, indifferently.
"He is the administrator of our county."
"Well, that is the county"s affair, not mine."
"And, still more, he is likely to be our stepfather."
"That is our mother"s affair." So saying, Richard turned his back on his brother, who wished to detain him, but the other shook him off.
"Don"t bother me with your Rideghvary. We didn"t come here to see him.
Go and court Alfonsine; there"s no one with her now but the little secretary with the squeaky voice."
The hussar officer danced for awhile and otherwise sought to amuse himself. Cards were never played at the Plankenhorst parties. Young ladies were there in plenty, and Richard enjoyed the reputation of a veritable Don Juan; but the very ease of his conquests destroyed their value in his eyes. A little maid-servant, however, who slapped him and ran away because he pinched her cheek, was something new. No man had ever defeated him in a duel, nor woman triumphed over him in a love affair.
Entering the supper-room later with his brother, he saw the little maid-servant presiding over the lemonade, and he pointed her out to Jeno.
"You bungler!" exclaimed the latter, under his breath; "you only fall from one blunder into another. She isn"t a servant, but Miss Edith Liedenwall, a relative of the family."
"What! She one of the family? And do they leave her alone on the stairs in the evening, and let her serve lemonade to the guests?"
Jeno shrugged his shoulders. "Well, you see, she is the daughter of some poor relations, and her aunt here has taken pity on her. Then, too, she is little more than a child,--only about fifteen years old,--and no one heeds her."
Richard looked at his brother coldly. "Was your Baroness Plankenhorst never of that age herself?" he asked.
"But what would you have them do with an adopted waif like that?"
returned the other. "They can"t rear her as if she were to be a great lady."
"Then they ought not to have adopted her," objected Richard. "No gentleman will pay court to her as long as she fills a menial"s place, and no poor man will venture to do so on account of her high birth."
"Quite true, but what can we do about it?" said Jeno.
Richard left his brother and advanced to the sideboard, where the girl was serving lemonade. She presented an exceedingly attractive appearance, her abundant dark hair coiled high on her head, her black eyes full of life, and a ready smile on her coral lips. She seemed to enjoy the part allotted to her, and met the guests" friendly advances in an unconstrained but modest manner. Upon Richard"s approach she did not turn away from him, as he might have expected from their earlier meeting, but met his look with a roguish smile in her bright eyes, and said to him, as he came nearer:
"Aha! now you are afraid of me, aren"t you?" And she had hit the truth, for the young officer really felt abashed in her presence.
"Miss Edith," said he, "I beg you to pardon me; but why do they let you wander about alone in the evening, where you are sure to meet so many people?"
"Oh, they all know me," she answered, "and I had an errand to do. You took me for a maid-servant, didn"t you?"
"That is, indeed, my only excuse," he replied.
"Well, don"t you think maid-servants have any rights that others are bound to respect?" asked the girl.
The question was a hard one for Richard to answer; he could find nothing to say.
"Now tell me what to give you," said Edith, "and then go back to the dancing-hall, where they are waiting for you."
The young man refused all the offered refreshments, but asked the girl to reach him the tip of her little finger in sign of forgiveness for his offence.
"No, no!" she cried, "I won"t shake hands with you. Your hand has been wicked."
"If you call my hand wicked," he returned, "I will go to-morrow and fight a duel and have it cut off. Do you really want my poor hand to be chopped off for offending you? If you do, just as surely as I stand here you shall see me day after to-morrow with only one hand."
"Oh, don"t talk like that!" exclaimed Edith. "I won"t be angry any longer." So saying, she gave him her hand--not merely her little finger, but the whole of her soft, warm little hand--and let him press it in his own. No one was near them at the moment.
"And now, not to offend you even with a look," said he, "I promise on my honour not to raise my eyes higher than your hand."
He kept his word, dropping his eyes as he released her hand and took his leave with a low bow.
As the two young men returned home together after midnight, Jeno noticed that his elder brother no longer teased him.
CHAPTER VI.
THE _BACKFISCH_.
One evening, after the habitual frequenters of the Plankenhorst house had taken their departure, as Alfonsine was undressing with the help of her maid, she turned to the latter and asked:
"What is the _backfisch_ doing nowadays, Betty?"
_Backfisch_, be it observed, means literally _a fish for frying_, but, as commonly used in German, it denotes a girl who is no longer a child, but not yet a young lady; one who is still innocent and harmless, and who feels strange emotions stirring in her breast, but fails to understand them; who takes jest for earnest and earnest for jest, and who believes the first pretty speech poured into her ear to be so much refined gold. That is the _backfisch_.
"The _backfisch_ is learning to swim," replied Mademoiselle Bettine.
"Still holding on to the guard-ropes? Not yet able to strike out alone?"
"She will be able before long," was Betty"s reply, as she took down her mistress"s hair and coiled it up anew for the night. "A day or two ago, as I was doing her hair, she asked me: "Whose hair is the longer, mine or Alfonsine"s?""
"Ha, ha! The _backfisch_!"
"And I told her that her hair was the more beautiful."
At this both laughed.
"She knows already, without any one"s telling her, that she is a pretty girl," said Alfonsine. "Does she ever talk about any of the gentlemen that visit us?"
"Oh, yes, we gossip about all the men that come to the house, and she tells me her opinion of each; but there is one she never names at all, and if I happen to mention him she blushes up to her eyes."
"And do you think he is after her?" asked Alfonsine.
"He is very cautious," answered the maid, "and whenever he meets her alone he can hardly find two words to say to her. But I know what that means."