The sick girl was alone. No one had any time to give her to-day, she said. The councillor had taken upon himself all the arrangements for the festival given in honour of Flora’s marriage, and everything was to be conducted upon a scale of great magnificence. He was determined to show the capital what money could do. To be sure, this was the weak point in his character. With her usual inconsequence, she had neglected to tell any one of the telegram she had dispatched to Kitty. Such an announcement would have been entirely superfluous, she declared, in reply to Kitty’s look of surprise and dismay; every one knew that she had promised to return and nurse her poor Henriette whenever she was sent for, and as for an unexpected encounter with the councillor, Kitty might rest perfectly easy; Moritz had "a new flame" in Berlin, whence he had returned of late, and especially yesterday, remarkably absent-minded; only smiling archly, and making no denial, when Flora had rallied him.
To these communications Kitty made no reply; she was possessed by the conviction that it had been high time for her to return. She found the sick girl much changed, and in a state of feverish agitation. The hard hollow cough shook her emaciated frame much more frequently than formerly, her hands were burning hot, and her breath came with great difficulty. She had hitherto always denied herself the relief of tears; her will was of iron. But to-day her beautiful eyes were swollen and disfigured with weeping. She was consumed by fear, she wailed, hiding her head on Kitty’s breast, lest Bruck, with all his love for Flora, should be wretchedly unhappy; and although nothing had been said by the dean’s widow about it, she was sure the old lady felt as she did, and was miserable. Kitty admonished her, rather curtly, that this was solely Bruck’s affair; no one had had more opportunity than he of being thoroughly aware of Flora’s egotistical nature. If he persisted in making her his wife, he was surely prepared to meet the consequences. Henriette started up in alarm; the words sounded so harsh. Indeed, there seemed a strange alteration in Kitty; a kind of stern reserve was in her whole manner, as though she had accepted her fate after a hard struggle.