"That you may have the pleasure of seeing Herr von Lozoncyi in all his glory?" asks Erika.
Curiosity carried the day. The Countess Lenzdorff left her card at the Palazzo Luzani, and as a consequence the Baroness Neerwinden called upon both ladies and left a written invitation for them which informed them that "my dear friend Minona von Rattenfels will delight us by reading aloud her latest, and unpublished, work."
To her grandmother's surprise, Erika seemed quite willing to go to this one of the Baroness Neerwinden's entertainments, and Constance Mühlberg accompanied them. The party was full of laughing expectation, much as if the pleasure in prospect had been a masquerade.
Expectation on this occasion did not much exceed reality: the old Countess and Constance Mühlberg were extremely entertained. And Erika----? Well, they arrived at a tolerably early hour, ten o'clock, and found the three immense rooms in which the Neerwinden was wont to receive almost empty.
The lady of the house, when they entered, was seated on a small divan, beneath a kind of canopy of antique stuffs in the remotest of these rooms. Her black eyes were still fine; her features were not ignoble, but were hard and unattractive.
She received the Countess Lenzdorff with effusive cordiality, referred to several youthful reminiscences which they possessed in common, and was quite gracious to both the younger ladies. After several commonplace remarks, she dashed boldly into a discourse upon the final destiny of the earth and the adjacent stars.
She had just informed her guests that she was privately engaged upon the improvement of the electric light, and should soon have completed a system of universal religion, when a sudden influx of guests caused her to stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving her hearers in doubt as to whether the catechism of the new faith was to be printed in Volapük or in French, in which latter language most of the Baroness's intellectual efforts were given to the world.
Erika was obliged to leave her place beside the hostess and to mingle in the crowd that now rapidly filled the three reception-rooms.
She found very few acquaintances, and made the rather annoying discovery that, with the exception of a couple of flat-chested English girls, she was the only young girl present. If Count Treurenberg had not made his appearance to play cicerone, she must have utterly failed to understand what was going on around her.