"The Countess says she is quite ready to purchase the china of you."

"To purchase it of me!" repeated the Conte, pale with anger, "but my dear Zoe,"--in moments of great excitement the Conte was wont to call the Baroness by her first name,--"but my dear Zoe what did you propose to her?"

"Exactly what you told me."

"Indeed?"--the Count drew closer to her, and leaned forward,--"did you tell her that I laid the china at her feet, not in the name of the Count Capriani, but of the Doctor Stein whom she knew years ago in the Riviera?"

"Yes, and I told her that you said you had formerly attended the Count, her husband."

"Well?"

"She replied--do you really wish to hear her reply."

"Yes."

"Well, then, she replied, 'that may possibly be so, but I do not remember it.'"

The Conte grew still paler, and his face wore an ugly expression;--he picked up a paper-knife of beautiful oriental workmanship, and began to toy with it restlessly.

"I beg you to observe," Zoe began, "that I am entirely innocent in this matter. You certainly remember that I postponed for weeks the delivery of your message, and that I fulfilled your commission reluctantly at last. I told you beforehand what the result would be; but you were so perfectly sure that the Countess would remember the name of Stein...."

"What's the matter?" asked Kilary approaching them. "What agitates you so, my dear Capriani."

"The Conte is determined to prove to me that nothing can withstand his power, not even a paperknife," said Zoe sharply, pointing to the one which the Conte was bending.

"Or the Lodrin arrogance," observed Kilary, "eh? My dear Capriani, in my native town in Upper Austria they have an old proverb, 'What can't be lifted must be let alone.' Now if you would only take this proverb to heart you would save yourself a vast amount of time and vexation."

Just then the paper-knife snapped in two, and the Conte threw the pieces on the floor.

"Who is riding past?" asked the baroness, with undisguised curiosity, leaning out of the window by which she had been standing.

"It must be Count Kamenz," said Ad'lin, who had been busy encouraging by her applause the united, artistic efforts of Fermor and Paul Angelico, "I am surprised that he has not paid us a visit before now."

"No, it is the Lodrin cousins," said Kilary, "they are evidently going to see Malzin."

Ad'lin looked disappointed. And the Conte turning away from the Baroness and Kilary began to pace the room slowly to and fro. After a while he paused in front of his wife, who with a sadder face than usual was cutting out her cretonne flowers. "You went to see the Malzins to-day,--how is he?"

"Very ill; unlike other consumptives, he is perfectly aware of his condition, and consequently the future of his children lies heavy on his heart. I did my best to comfort him--but that was little enough."

"Do you know whether he still proposes to go to Gleichenberg?" her husband interrupted her.

"Yes, he is getting ready to go. Muller, the old nurse voluntarily offered to accompany him; she could not find it in her heart to have him waited upon and tended by strangers."

But Muller's touching devotion did not interest Capriani in the least.

"This is evidently just the time to talk with him about the vault," he said as if to himself.

"What do you mean?" exclaimed Frau von Capriani startled out of her usual submissive gentleness,--"with an invalid!" ....

"Come, come, let us have no sentimentality!" he interrupted her sharply. "You know I understand nothing of the kind."

CHAPTER VIII.

In his childhood, beside his father's sick-bed, Oswald had learned how to treat an invalid with rare tenderness; but what he never had been taught nor could have been taught,--what was his very own nature,--was his impetuous, untiring kindheartedness, a kindheartedness that was never content with pa.s.sively theorizing, but always refused to discontinue effort even in the case of the most distressing emergencies, and always longed to soothe with hope the pain which it could not cure.

Fritz, on the day after the dinner, had sent a note to Tornow, telling of his sad condition and of his projected journey to Gleichenberg, and Oswald and Georges had instantly ridden over to Schneeburg, where they found Fritz coughing incessantly, propped up with pillows in a large easy-chair before his writing-table, painfully endeavouring to write out his last will. Ten minutes of Oswald's presence sufficed to cause life to wear a different aspect for Fritz. Oswald scolded him for giving them all such a fright with that desponding note of his, protested that a man looking as well as he did had no right to depress his friends with melancholy forebodings, told of the miracles wrought by Gleichenberg on many of his acquaintances, and declared that 'a mere hemorrhage' was of very little consequence, particularly in cases like Fritz's where consumption was not in the family.

"I had one, when I was a volunteer, after parade one day," he concluded, "and I never should know it to-day."

"That must have been something different, Ossi," said Fritz, laughing at his friend's earnestness;--the laugh brought on a violent fit of coughing. Oswald put his arm around him and supported his head;--"it will soon be over, hand him a gla.s.s of water, Georges, there...."

"However low down a fellow may be, it lightens his heart to look into your eyes, Ossi," said Fritz, taking breath after the cough had gone.

"You're right there, Fritz," Georges agreed, "and yet there's no more inflammable, and momentarily unjust man in the world, than he."

"Yes, but then...." began Fritz.

"Now be quiet," Oswald ordered, "the best thing for you to do would be to lie down for a while, and we will do our best to entertain you without making you laugh."

"Thanks," said Fritz, "but I .... I should like to say something to you.

When a man stands on the brink of the grave...."

"Aha, you are posing again as an interesting invalid," Oswald rallied him; "well--Georges, go down stairs and pay your respects to Pipsi, there's a good fellow; I hear her chattering with her little brother beneath the window;--I know how pleased Fritz is with your visit, but, just now, you are a little in the way."

Georges laughed, and withdrew bowing low.

They were left alone in the long, low room; against the windows the leaves of the old apricot-trees rustled dreamily, and the air was fragrant with the scent of the last flowers of summer. The portraits of Fritz's parents and of their Imperial Majesties looked down from the wall, their outlines rather vague in the darkened apartment, and on the old door-jamb, scored with the children's names a prismatic sunbeam was playing.

"Now tell me, Fritz, what is the matter? You know there is no need of any beating about the bush between us," said Oswald leaning towards the sick man, "speak low, I can hear you."

Fritz fixed his gaze upon the door-jamb where among the old names two new ones had been written, 'Pipsi five, Franzi three years old.' "G.o.d knows, I have no reason to cling to life," he said with a sigh, "and yet my heart is sore at the thought that next year I shall--make no mark there!--Poor children!--who will care for them when I am gone?"

His voice broke, and it was with difficulty that he kept back the tears. "I have taken a great deal of pains with them, and hitherto they have been good little things,--at least so they seem to me ...."

"Your children are charming," was Oswald's warm a.s.surance.

"Are they not?" gasped Fritz, and his hollow eyes sparkled, "but they are still so little--when I am dead they will run wild. Capriani will not let them starve--a.s.suredly not; but _how_ will he provide for them?--and my wife agrees with him in everything--that is the worst of it;--Ossi, in my will I have expressed a wish that my children should be separated from their mother. She does not care for them very much; I think she would be glad to be rid of the burden of bringing them up .... and I have begged you--you will not take it ill of me, Ossi,...."

he hesitated.

"Would you like me to be their guardian?"

"Ah, Ossi!"

"Then that is settled," said Oswald, holding out his hand, "and, moreover, my mother told me to tell you that when I am married she should have nothing more to do, and would take pleasure in attending to the education of your little ones. You can hardly ask anything better for them."

"Ah, Ossi, your mother is an angel!"

"Indeed she is," said Oswald gravely.