Part 13 (2/2)

”Zdena, how can you hurt me so?”

Her youthful blood pulsates almost as fiercely as does his own; now, when the moment for an explanation has come, and can no longer be avoided, now, one kind word from him, and all the barriers which with the help of pure reason she has erected to s.h.i.+eld her from the insidious sweetness of her dreams will crumble to dust. But Harry does not speak this word: he is far too agitated to speak it. Instead of touching her heart, his harshness irritates her pride. Throwing back her head, she darts an angry glance at him from her large eyes.

”I do not know what you mean.”

”I mean that you are letting that old c.o.xcomb make love to you,” he murmurs, angrily.

She lifts her eyebrows, and replies, calmly, ”Yes!”

The young officer continues to gaze searchingly into her face.

”You are thoughtless,” he says, slowly, with emphasis. ”In your eyes Wenkendorf is an old man; but he does not think himself so old as you think him, and--and----” Suddenly, his forced composure giving way, he bursts forth: ”At the least it is ridiculous! it is silly to behave as you are doing!”

In the entire dictionary Harry could have found no word with which to describe Zdena's conduct that would have irritated her more than ”silly.” If he had called her unprincipled, devilish, odious, cruel, she could have forgiven him; but ”silly!”--that word she never can forgive; it makes her heart burn and smart as salt irritates an open wound.

”I should like to know by what right you call me thus to account!” she exclaims, indignantly.

”By what right?” he repeats, beside himself. ”Can you ask that?”

She taps the gravel of the pathway defiantly with her foot and is obstinately silent.

”What did you mean by your treatment of me in Vienna? what did you mean by all your loving looks and kind words? what did you mean when you--on the evening before you left----”

Zdena's face is crimson, her cheeks and ears burn with mortification.

”We grew up together like brother and sister,” she murmurs. ”I have always considered you as a brother----”

”Ah, indeed! a brother!” His pulses throb wildly; his anger well-nigh makes him forget himself. Suddenly an ugly idea occurs to him,--an odious suspicion. ”Perhaps you were not aware there in Vienna that by a marriage with you I should resign my brilliant prospects?”

They confront each other, stiff, unbending, both angry, each more ready to offend than to conciliate.

Around them the August heat broods over the garden; the bushes, the flowers, the shrubbery, all cast black shadows upon the smooth-shaven, yellowing gra.s.s, where here and there cracks in the soil are visible.

Everything is quiet, but in the distance can be heard the gardener filling his large watering-can at the pump, and the jolting along the road outside the garden of the heavy harvest-wagons laden with grain.

”Did you know it then?” he asks again, more harshly, more contemptuously.

Of course she knew it, quite as well as she knows it now; but what use is there in her telling him so, when he asks her about it in such a tone?

Instead of replying, she frowns haughtily and shrugs her shoulders.

For one moment more he stands gazing into her face; then, with a bitter laugh, he turns from her and strides towards the summer-house.

”Harry!” she calls after him, in a trembling undertone, but his blood is coursing too hotly in his veins--he does not hear her. Although he is one of the softest-hearted of men, he is none the less one of the most quick-tempered and obstinate.

We leave it to the reader to judge whether the major would have been very well satisfied with this result of his cunning diplomacy.

Whilst the two young people have been thus occupied in playing at hide-and-seek with their emotions and sentiments, the little summer-house, where the reading was to be held, has been the scene of a lively dispute. Countess Zriny and Baron Wenkendorf have made mutual confession of their sentiment with regard to Wagner.

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