“Why, how deep you are plunged in your eager whispers there,” cried my father to us once while the cards were being shuffled; “what are you two plotting about?”
“I am telling the countess campaigning tales.”
“Oh, well, she is accustomed to that from her childhood. I tell her some too occasionally. Six cards, doctor, and a quart-major.”
We resumed our whispered talk.
Suddenly, as Tilling spoke—and he had again fastened his gaze on mine, and such intimate sympathy spoke in his voice—I thought of the princess.
It gave me a stab, and I turned my head away. Tilling stopped in the middle of a sentence.
“Why do you change countenance so, countess?” he asked in alarm. “Have I said anything to displease you?”
“Oh no! it was only a painful thought: pray go on.”
“I have forgotten what I was talking about. I would rather you would confide your painful thought to me. I have been the whole time pouring my heart out to you so openly. Now repay it to me.”
“It is quite impossible for me to confide to you what I was thinking about just now.”
“Impossible! May I guess? Was it about yourself?”
“No.”
“Me?”
I nodded.
“Something painful about me, and something you cannot tell me. Is it—?”
“Do not trouble your head about it: I refuse any more information.” Then I rose and looked at the clock. “Why, it is half-past nine! I am going to say goodbye to you now, papa.”
My father looked up from his cards.
“What! are you too going to a party?”
“No; I am going home. I went to bed very late yesterday.”
“And so you are sleepy? Tilling, that is not very complimentary to you!”
“No, no,” I protested laughingly, “it is no fault of the baron; we have been talking very livelily.”
I took leave of my father and the doctor—Tilling begged to be permitted to see me into my carriage. It was he who put my cloak on in the anteroom and gave me his arm down the steps. As we went down he stopped for a moment and asked me seriously:—
“Once more, countess, have I anyhow offended you?”
“No; on my honour.”
“Then I am pacified.”
When he put me into the carriage he pressed my hand hard and put it to his lips.
“When may I wait on you?”
“On Saturday I am—”
“At home—I understand—not at all then.”
He bowed and stepped back.
I wanted to call after him, but the servant shut the carriage door.
I threw myself back in the corner, and should have liked to cry—tears of spite like a naughty child. I was in a rage with myself; how could I ever have been so cold, so impolite, so rough almost to a man with whom I feel such warm sympathy? It was the fault of the princess. How I hated her! What was this? Jealousy? Then the explanation of what was moving me burst on me—I was in love with Tilling. “In love, love, love!” rattled out the wheels on the pavement. “You are in love with him!” was what the street lamps as they flew past darted on to me. “You love him!” was breathed to me out of my glove, which I pressed to my lips on the place that he had kissed.
Next day I wrote the following lines in the red book: “What the carriage wheels and the street lamps were saying to me yesterday is not true—or at least much exaggerated. A sympathetic attraction to a noble and clever man. True; but passion? Ha! I am not going to throw my heart away on any man who belongs to another woman. He also feels sympathy for me. We understand each other in many things. Perhaps he is the only man who shares my views about war; but he is not on that account anywhere near falling in love with me, and I ought to be just as far from falling in love with him. That I did not ask him to visit me on another day than the regular reception day, which he hates so, might indeed have looked a little unkind, after the intimate conversation we had been having. But perhaps it is better so. After the interval or a week or two, after yesterday’s impressions, which have shaken me so, I shall be able to meet Tilling again quite calmly, relying on the idea that he is in love with another lady, and shall be able to refresh myself with his friendly and suggestive conversation. For it is indeed a pleasure to converse with him; it is so different, so totally different, from all others. I am truly glad that I am able today to sum up this so calmly. Yesterday I might for an instant have even apprehended that my peace was gone, that I might become the prey of torturing jealousy. This fear has today disappeared.”
The same day I paid a visit to my friend Lori Griesbach—the same at whose house I heard of the death of my poor Arno. She was the one among the young ladies of my acquaintance with whom I associated most, and most intimately. Not that we agreed in many of our views, or that we understood each other completely—though this is no doubt the foundation of a real friendship—but we had been playmates as children, we had shared the same position as young married women, had then seen each other almost daily;
