Flora followed the silent group apart, as if bound by no tie to the three people whom misfortune had suddenly shown to be so closely allied. On the spot where the bearers had rested the water was standing in little pools; she walked through them not heeding the wet, and her long muslin train dragged damp and dirty over the gravelled path. Suddenly she tore the wreath of marguerites from her hair; it was a bitter mockery in the midst of all this horror; she plucked and pulled it to pieces mechanically as she walked along, and the little white stars lay scattered upon the ground over which she had passed.
She too passed her grandmother and her friends without heeding them. Her flashing glance rested immovably upon her lover’s tall, commanding figure; evidently she momentarily expected that he would turn to her, and thus she followed him step by step to the house and across its threshold. The Frau President called after her; the earth was shaken by another loud crash from the ruins, followed by shouts and cries. She did not look round; the world might be dissolved behind her; she was inexorably resolved to assert her "rights."
A silent night of anxious, breathless suspense ensued upon this horrible day. No one went to bed; the gas was lighted all over the house, the servants glided noiselessly about on tiptoe, or huddled whispering in corners, and when some fireman passed near the house, or a door was softly opened, all started as from an electric shock and hurried into the corridors, sure that some intelligence would be brought of the master of the house. But the night waned, and the dawn peeped in at the windows,—he never, never came.
The rosy light of a glorious morning shone upon Villa Baumgarten, making the broken window-panes glitter and shine. It entered the ball-room and kindled the crimson of the fallen canopy, it kissed the fading leaves of the festoons of green and the broken boughs of the plants brought from the conservatory;—what chaos reigned there! One single minute had converted the costly but frail "Arabian Nights’ Entertainment" into a heap of ruins and fragments. The charming verses in praise of the bride were unspoken, and upon the spot where the bespangled genius should have hovered in a rosy cloud, the keen morning breeze toyed mockingly with shreds of pink and white tulle.