The clock struck eight. Gentlemen on foot had already been coming to the hotel for some time, then ladies arrived, and at length the first carriage containing guests for the ball rolled up, dainty feet tripped up the steps, and rich silks rustled as they walked. Carriage followed carriage; now came an elegant equipage with magnificent gray horses, a charming slight woman's figure in a light blue dress covered with delicate lace, bent forward, and a silvery laugh sounded in Linden's ear. "It is Mrs. Fredericks," he heard the people murmur behind him.
The beautiful young wife swept up the steps like a lovely fairy, followed by her husband in a faultless black dress-coat, carrying her fan and bouquet.
The carriage dashed across the marketplace again, to return in less than five minutes.
"Gertrude!" whispered Linden, drawing involuntarily further back into the shadow. A short stout lady in a light gray dress descended from the carriage, then she glided out and stood beside her mother, slender and graceful in her shimmering white silk, her beautiful shoulders lightly covered, and in her hand a well-known bouquet of pale roses. But this was not the girl of a few hours back. The small head was bent back as if the massive light brown braids were too heavy for it, and an expression of proud reserve which he had not before perceived, rested on the open countenance.
Two gentlemen started forward to greet the ladies; the first gallantly offered his arm to the mother, the other approached the young girl. She thanked him proudly, scarcely touching his arm with her finger-tips. Then suddenly this figure from which he could not take his eyes, vanished like a beautiful vision.
The encounter had left him in a mood of intense excitement. He bestowed a dollar on a poor woman who stood beside him with a miserable child in her arms, and he ordered out so big a glass of hot wine for old Summerfeld, his coachman, that the old man was alarmed and hoped "they should get home all right."
"What folly it is," said Linden to himself. And when a moment later his carriage drove up, and at the same moment the notes of a Strauss waltz struck his ear, he began to hum the air of "The Rose of the South." Then the carriage rattled over the market-place out on the dark country road, and sooner than usual he was at home in his quiet little room, taking a thousand pleasant thoughts with him.