He fell into silent meditation. What it was that had occupied his thoughts, he showed in the first words that fell from him. After a pause, during which Anna Maria had been busy at her work, in nervous silence;
"At least, be kind to her to-morrow when she comes to see us."
"I have always known what my duty is," replied the baroness, looking up from her work and raising her eyebrows. "I shall know it in this case also."
The baron apparently did not feel quite reassured by her words; but before he could find words to express his apprehension, the servant opened the door and announced, "Baron and Baroness Barnewitz."
The two entered the room.
Baron Barnewitz and his wife had only come to town the day before.
Baron Barnewitz was a great hunter before the Lord, and did not like to leave his dogs and his horses. He had not come much into the parlor since the hunting season had opened, and he still bore the traces of his last fox-hunt. His shoulders and his red beard looked still broader, and his voice was louder and hoarser than usual. Hortense Barnewitz, on the contrary, was a shade paler and lighter than in the summer, and looked a great deal more wearied and fatigued. Her lips were thinner, and her blue eyes had become sharper. She evidently began to find life, all in all, unprofitable, especially since last night.
She had been sadly neglected at the ball for the sake of younger and more attractive ladies.
"Oh, at last we have the pleasure!" said Anna Maria, rising to meet her guests, with the stereotyped gracious smile which she always held ready for such occasions.
"Entirely our own pleasure, madame," cried the fox-hunter, kissing the thin hand of the baroness; "entirely our own. By God, could not come sooner. Arrived yesterday at noon; last night at Grieben's. Pity you were not there; famous, I tell you; had almost as much fun as at the last hunt. My wife was tired; had no encouragement. People are always tired when no encouragement. Ha, ha, ha!"
"You must pardon Karl's way of talking," said Hortense, taking a seat by the baroness on the sofa; "he has lived the last six weeks almost exclusively with grooms and huntsmen."
"And with you, my darling! ha, ha, ha!" laughed the gallant husband.
"Well, Hortense needn't take it amiss. Husbands, wife, can afford a joke, eh?"
"How do things look at home?" asked Anna Maria, trying to give a more interesting turn to the conversation.
"Oh, so so!" said Baron Barnewitz. "The winter wheat is generally doing very well; here and there the mice have done some harm. The summer was too hot. I think the rain will do us some good now. _Apropos_ of rain, Grenwitz! we must settle that question about the ditches, else we shall all of us be drowned one of these days. I talked about it to Oldenburg, a few days ago. He belongs to our district, with his estate at Cona. He thought, too, the thing would have to be done this fall."
"Why, does the baron nowadays take an interest in farming? That is something entirely new," said Anna Maria.
"Entirely new, madame," affirmed Baron Barnewitz; "the very last news, ha, ha, ha! since his return from his travels; that is to say, about a fortnight. I think he will be crazy next."
"Or marry your cousin Melitta," said the baroness, smiling.
"Perhaps that would be the same thing," suggested Hortense.
"But, dear Hortense, you ought not to be so satirical," said the baroness, threatening the satirical blonde with her uplifted finger jestingly.
"Are jealous; you are jealous!" cried Baron Barnewitz. "You have always envied her her beaux, because she has one for every finger."
"It is a great art to be attended by gentlemen, if one leaves no means of coquetry unused," said Hortense, dropping her cloak far enough to show her white shoulders.
"Well, it is not quite as bad as that," replied her husband.
Hortense shrugged her white shoulders.
"Bad is a relative idea. Melitta has given so much ground for gossip in her life that people are not so very strict with her."
"But that might be the case with Baron Oldenburg too," said Anna Maria.
"Possibly," said Hortense. "I do not know Baron Oldenburg well enough----"
The fox-hunter saw himself compelled to pull out his handkerchief, and to blow his nose furiously.
"Not well enough," repeated Hortense, who probably discovered some connection between her words and the violent blowing of her husband's nose; "but, if he can get over Melitta's last affair, he must, indeed, be very tolerant."
"Last affair!" said moral Anna Maria, raising her eyebrows; "why, I had not heard of anything!"
"Gossip, madame, gossip!" said Barnewitz, who remembered that Melitta was his first cousin, and that he had, as a boy of seventeen, worshipped the beautiful girl of twelve. "Nothing but the gossip of a set of old women."
"Old women often have very useful, sharp eyes," remarked Hortense, examining attentively the stucco ornaments of the ceiling.
"You make me very curious," said Anna Maria, sitting down comfortably in the sofa-corner.
"It is nonsense, madame, I assure you," said Barnewitz, angrily. "A couple of old women from our village, who were stealing wood at night in the Berkow forest--at least I cannot see how else they could have been there--say that Melitta has had secret interviews in her little forest cottage with--Heaven knows whom!"
"Why, that is quite a piquant story," said Anna Maria.
"Yes; and what makes it still more piquant," said Hortense, her eyes still busy at the ceiling, "is this: that the Heaven knows who always came by the road from Grenwitz, and always went back again the same way!"
Anna Maria's eyes opened as wide as they possibly could when she heard this statement.
"When is that reported to have taken place?" she asked, with severity, "I will not hope----"
"Oh, do not trouble yourself about it," interrupted Hortense; "Felix came much later. It was about the time when we gave our first ball, and Oldenburg, who was assigning the guests their seats at table with Karl, made my cousin go to table with Doctor Stein, and carried him afterwards home in his own carriage. It was a touching attention, though not without its comical side in this case; as well as the warmth with which Oldenburg afterwards took Mr. Stein's part when your nephew, Felix, had that unpleasant affair with him. Oh, it is too amusing! But nobody can accuse my cousin that she does not know how to make friends of her friends."
The old baron had listened to this interesting conversation in perfect silence, and apparently with utter indifference. All the more surprising was the vehemence with which he now said, shaking his gray head indignantly,
"Frau von Berkow is a dear lady, whom I esteem; Baron Oldenburg is a man of honor; I have always known him as such, and have had quite recently occasion to see it again in some very important business I had with him. I am sorry, my friends, to hear you speak of them in this hard and unfeeling manner--very sorry! very sorry!"
And the old man trembled so violently with deep emotion that he could hardly carry the pinch he held between his fingers to his nose.
Baron Barnewitz nodded his head, as if he wished to say: The old gentleman is not so far out. But Hortense was not in the humor to accept the correction patiently.
"Don't trouble yourself about that, my dear baron," she replied scornfully; "you know that the name of this Mr. Stein has elsewhere also obtained quite a celebrity in the annals of the past summer. The more frequently it is, therefore, coupled with my cousin, why, all the more rarely can it be put in connection with the names of other ladies."
It was fortunate for the old gentleman that he did not understand this allusion to Helen, since it had never occurred to him in the most remote way that his daughter could have been the cause of the duel between Felix and Oswald.
In the meantime Hortense seemed to feel that she had probably gone too far. She hastened, therefore, to say that it was quite late already, and she was just about to rise in order to take leave when more visitors were announced, which compelled her to stay. No one was to say of Hortense Barnewitz that she had fled before a rival. But such a rival was, in more than one respect, Emily Cloten, who now rushed in ahead of her husband.
Emily had been married a fortnight. She had preferred not to make any other wedding tour than from the estate of her parents, where the wedding had taken place, to Grunwald. She did not wish to miss the beginning of the season. She longed to appear at once on the stage of her future triumphs, in order to prevent any possible competition.
Emily Breesen did not wish to become Frau von Cloten for nothing--the wife of a man to whom she had engaged herself in a fit of jealousy--whom she had married from pure caprice.
The success which she had obtained at the first balls of the season fulfilled her boldest expectations. She saw all the men at her feet, and the consciousness of the power of her charms furnished an excellent relief for her coquettish beauties. The certainty of victory beamed from her large, almond-shaped gray eyes; the certainty of victory played around her rather large but well-shaped mouth, with its dazzling white teeth; the certainty of victory peeped stealthily from the dimples in her rosy cheeks; the certainty of victory even proclaimed itself in the rustling of her long silk dresses and the nodding of the white ostrich-feather on her black-velvet hat, from under which the luxuriant brown hair overflowed in all directions.
Baron Cloten, on his side, seemed to have found out that the sublime good fortune of being the husband of so brilliant a lady was somewhat equivocal. There was around his eyes a faint expression like that of a turkey-hen who has for weeks been dreaming and boasting of the hoped-for happiness to promenade in the poultry-yard at the head of a number of young, respectable turkeys, and who suddenly sees her brood swim on the pond in the shape of wild, disrespectful ducklings. Those who had known him before could not help noticing that he twisted his blond moustache less frequently, and that his voice sounded by no means as self-complacent as formerly. Perhaps he was all the more disconcerted as he had unexpectedly and without any desire of his own met his lady-love, whom he had faithlessly and somewhat cowardly abandoned; while on the other hand, this very circumstance seemed visibly to increase the good humor of his young wife. She had the pleasing consciousness of having totally eclipsed Hortense last night, and she now enjoyed the sight of her rival most heartily. Of course she greeted her with all the signs of most cordial friendship, and asked her with deep sympathy whether the night's rest had relieved her of her headache of last night.
"What a pity, dear Barnewitz, that your migraine compelled you to leave before the cotillon. I assure you, it was the most lovely cotillon I have ever danced. Prince Waldenberg--you know I led the cotillon with Prince Waldenberg; Max Grieben had begged us to do so--knew a number of the newest figures, as they dance them at the court balls in Berlin. I tell you such a cotillon was never danced yet in Grunwald. Was it not charming, Arthur?"
"Oh certainly, certainly?" rattled the obedient husband, who had been condemned to dance with a poor, hunchbacked countess; "I assure you, it was divine; upon my word, divine!"