Kitty extricated herself impatiently from the encircling arm. "Never!" she cried, shaking her head indignantly, her whole maidenly soul in revolt against the consciousness to which she had been so suddenly and rudely awakened.
"Indeed,—never?" Flora repeated. "Perhaps the _parti_ is not sufficiently distinguished, eh? You are waiting for some needy count or prince, who, after the fashion of the day, will come to release, not Dornröschen herself, but her money-bags from the spell. Well, the present time is by no means poor in such marriages! And we know, too, how that unfortunate incumbrance, the wife, usually fares. If you would hear perpetually how your grandfather drove the mill-wagon and your grandmother went barefoot, then marry into some noble family. I really should like to know what you find to object to in Moritz, or rather what can justify you in rejecting his hand. You are very wealthy, to be sure, but we know where your money came from. You are young, but no beauty, child; and as for your talent, which you well know how to bring forward, it is but a spark assiduously fanned into a little flame by ambitious teachers, and will soon be extinguished when they can no longer look to you for the rich reward of their services."
"Be quiet! I speak in your interest now," Flora continued, dismissing her remonstrance with a decided wave of her hand. "Perhaps, Kitty, you think Moritz ought to display a more passionate affection for you. My dear child, he is a middle-aged man, who has long outlived a school-girl’s romantic idea of love. It is, besides, a question whether you will ever be loved for yourself alone,—that must always be a question in the case of such an heiress. I cannot understand you. Hitherto you have devoted yourself to the care of an invalid, as any confirmed old maid might have done, because—well, apparently because no one desired you to do so; and now, when Henriette makes her future existence dependent upon your remaining here, you wish to go. For my part, I should be far more content in L—— if I knew that you had our sister in charge; and as for Bruck, you have just had a proof, poor child, of how little there is of sympathy between you,—he prefers to have that spoiled boy Job Brandau beneath his roof, to your constant presence there; but, nevertheless, I am sure that, since he is obliged to leave his patient here, he would like to know that she has some one with her whom she really loves."