"Do not trouble yourself about that; she will not come; she is tied as securely to-day to the apron-string of her detestable old governess as she was during papa’s lifetime," said Flora. "That is easy to see from her letters."
"Well, perhaps it is better that she should stay where she is," the Frau President remarked, with a shade of eagerness. "To be candid, I have no great desire to shelter her beneath my wing and waste my time in schooling her; it is very tiresome. I never really liked her; not because she was the child of my daughter’s successor,—that I have always declared,—but she was altogether too much at home in the mill, getting her clothes and hair covered with meal; and then she was a self-willed little thing."
"A genuine ’child of the people,’ and yet—papa’s darling," Flora added, with a bitter smile.
"Apparently, my dear, because she was his youngest child," said the Frau President, who never permitted a suspicion, either in herself or in others, that any one belonging to her could be slighted. "You were just as much his darling at one time. Well, Moritz, are you coming?"
He hastily complied. As they left the room, Flora rang for her maid. "I wish to retire to my dressing-room to write; take my writing-materials and these papers there for me," she ordered. "Of course I can see no one this evening."
The red glow was no longer seen outside the windows, but the brilliant light from the drawing-room gleamed over the tempest-swept avenue until long past midnight. The councillor was at one of the card-tables. Upon his entrance every one received him with a kindly greeting or a warm pressure of the hand, that fell like sunshine on his anxious, troubled heart. Here, among these faces, stamped with the pride of noble birth or official arrogance, his line of conduct seemed so perfectly justifiable that he could hardly understand the tormenting scruples that assailed him. Why expose one’s self to hostile criticism when one is conscious of entire innocence even in thought? And then such a low affair altogether! All this delightful scandal which was now whispered about, these stories over which each noble guest was glad to throw "a silken mantle," concerned high-born errors; but what mercy could these people show to one among them, not legitimately of them, accused of a vulgar attempt to rob the castle miller’s safe? He could, however, no longer console himself with the idea that his silence harmed no one: it threatened to sever two human souls united by a betrothal ring. Pshaw! Flora was an eccentric creature. The next time some special distinction was awarded to Bruck, which his great learning and ability made certain, matters would be all right again. And with a glass of delicious punch he drained down his last scruple.
