As he spoke, his aunt, struggling against her evident emotion, held out her hand to him, and he—usually reserve itself—put his arm around her slender form and clasped her close to his breast. The suffering, the calumniation, which they two had steadfastly endured together isolated them, in the moment of recompense, from the rest of the circle.
Flora turned away and walked to the window, biting her lip until it nearly bled; one could see how she longed to thrust away the faithful friend from the place which the false love had forfeited.
"But he is going away, aunt," Henriette said, in a low, hoarse tone.
"Yes, to where fortune and fame await him," the old lady answered, lifting her tearful face from his shoulder. "I can gladly stay behind in the home which his filial love has provided for me, if I know him appreciated, honoured, and esteemed where he is. And, besides, my mission is almost at an end,—another is to take my place." The tenderness of her tone gave way to profound seriousness, as her eyes, usually so gentle in their expression, looked almost sternly towards the beautiful woman at the window. "She, with her rich endowments of intellect, will appreciate more fully than I can the sanctity and, at the same time, the frequent trials of his profession, and will surely create for him a home whither he may flee from the cares that beset his public career, and where affection and serenity will abide _uniformly_." The emphasis she placed upon the last word told Kitty that the widow had observed, and ascribed to caprice, Flora’s behaviour on the preceding day.
"That is all very charming and delightful, my dear Frau Dean, and I have no doubt that Flora will make an admirable professor’s wife," the Frau President remarked, evidently piqued by the tone which the simple widow of a dean had adopted towards her grandchild; "but nowadays there can be no home without comfortable apartments, and I am having an immense amount of trouble in arranging them. I have just had a most fatiguing discussion with the cabinet-maker; he insists—Heaven knows why!—that it will be impossible to have Flora’s buhl furniture, ordered months ago, finished by Whitsuntide. And Flora, too, has had trouble with her trousseau,—the workwomen have been so dilatory that it cannot be ready before the beginning of July. What is to be done?"