Part 55 (2/2)

Harry is expected at lunch. The major is burning with impatience.

”One o'clock,” he remarks. ”The boy ought to be back by this time. What do you say to walking a little way to meet him?”

”As you please, uncle,” the girl gaily a.s.sents. They turn towards the house, whence Krupitschka comes running, breathless with haste.

”What is the matter?” the major calls out.

”Nothing, nothing, Herr Baron,” the man replies; ”but the Frau Baroness desires you both to come to the drawing-room; she has a visitor.”

”Is that any reason why you should run yourself so out of breath that you look like a fish on dry land?” the major bawls to his old servant.

”You fairly frightened me, you a.s.s! Who is the visitor?”

”Please--I do not know,” declares Krupitschka, lying brazenly, while the major frowns, saying, ”There's an end to our walk,” and never noticing the sly smile upon the old man's face.

Zdena runs to her room to smooth her hair, tossed by the breeze, while the major, annoyed, goes directly to the drawing-room. He opens the door and stands as if rooted to the threshold. Beside the sofa where Frau Rosamunda is enthroned, with her official hostess expression, doing the honours with a grace all her own, sits a broad-shouldered old gentleman in a loose long-tailed coat, laughing loudly at something she has just told him.

”Franz!” exclaims Paul von Leskjewitsch.

”Here I am,” responds the elder brother, with hardly-maintained composure. He rises; each advances towards the other, but before they can clasp hands the elder of the two declares, ”I wish, Paul, you would tell your bailiff to see to the ploughing on your land. That field near the forest is in a wretched condition,--hill and valley, the clods piled up, and wheat sown there. I have always held that no military man can ever learn anything about agriculture. You never had the faintest idea of farming.” And as he speaks he clasps the major's hand and pinches Harry's ear. The young fellow has been looking on with a smile at the meeting between the brothers.

”I understand you, uncle: I am not to leave the service. I could not upon any terms,” the young man a.s.sures him,--”not even if I were begged to do so.”

”He's a hard-headed fellow,” Baron Franz says, with a laugh; ”and so is the girl. Did she tell you that she met me in the forest? We had a conversation together, she and I. At first she took me for that fool Studnecka; then she guessed who I was, and read me such a lecture! I did not care: it showed me that she was a genuine Leskjewitsch. H'm! I ought to have come here then, but--I--could not find the way; I waited for some one to show it to me.” He pats Harry on the shoulder. ”But where the deuce is the girl? Is she hiding from me?”

At this moment Zdena enters. The old man turns ghastly pale; his hands begin to tremble violently, as he stretches them out towards her. She gazes at him for an instant, then runs to him and throws her arms around his neck. He clasps her close, as if never to let her leave him.

The others turn away. There is a sound of hoa.r.s.e sobbing. All that the strong man has h.o.a.rded up in his heart for twenty years a.s.serts itself at this moment.

It is not long, however, before all emotion is calmed, and affairs take their natural course. The two elderly men sit beside Frau Rosamunda, still enthroned on her sofa, and the lovers stand in the recess of a window and look out upon the spring.

”So we are not to be poor, after all?” Zdena says, with a sigh.

”It seems not,” Harry responds, putting his arm round her.

She does not speak for a while; then she murmurs, softly, ”'Tis a pity: I took such pleasure in it!”

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 1: One of a princely family who, although subject to royal authority, is allowed to retain some sovereign privileges.]

THE END.

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