"Why?" He hesitated a moment, and then replied, calmly, "Because I have no wish to be the last among the Countess Erika's adorers to drag her triumphal car. Now you know. Such plain questions provoke plain answers." He looked at the old lady as he spoke, to see if he had gone too far. No, he was one of those favoured individuals to whom thrice as much is forgiven as to other men. Something in the intonation of his gentle, cordial voice, his frank yet melancholy glance, and especially his smile, his charming insinuating smile, instantly prepossessed people in his favour. It was the same smile with which as a lad of seventeen he had beguiled little Erika's tender heart, the merry, careless smile which he must have inherited from an amiable, light-hearted mother.
The old lady only laughed at his confession, and then asked, mockingly, "And now you are content to be the very last, etc., etc.?"
He shook his head: "Now it has occurred to me that perhaps I can offer the Countess Erika a small pleasure which none other among her adorers can give her, and I come to ask if she will give me leave to do so."
Erika was silent. Countess Lenzdorff said, "Herr von Lozoncyi, you speak in riddles."
Lozoncyi turned from one to the other of the ladies with a look calculated to go directly to their hearts, and then, addressing the younger one, said, "You perhaps remember that I am in your debt, Countess Erika?"
"Five guilders," he repeated. "It seems a trifle; but then it was much for me. Without those five guilders I should probably never have been able to reach my aunt Illona in Munich, and I might have starved in a ditch. You see that I owe you much; and in consideration of this fact I have come to ask if you will allow me to paint your portrait."
"For five guilders?" exclaimed the old Countess, with comical emphasis. Every one knew how difficult it was to persuade Lozoncyi to paint a portrait, and what a fabulous price he asked when induced to do so.
"I entreat you not to refuse me, Countess Erika," he begged, with clasped hands.
"I advise you to accept the offer," said her grandmother: "it will hardly be made a second time."
"You shall not be subjected to the slightest inconvenience," he went on to Erika, "except that of being bored for a few hours. I know that you do not, as a rule, like my pictures, and therefore I promise you that I will burn this one if it does not please you, even though I should consider it a masterpiece. But should I succeed in pleasing you, the picture may serve to remind you sometimes of a poor fellow who----"