“Fi donc!” said Carla.
“For heaven’s sake, do not misunderstand me!” cried the Count. “It is evident that this suggestion could only come from Signor Giraldi, and from no one else. The thing is simply that Signor Giraldi, as the Baroness’s agent—”
“Spare me anything of that sort, my dear Count,” cried Carla. “Once for all, I understand nothing about it. I only know that my sister-in-law is a delightful creature, and that you are a terribly blasé man, whom every well-behaved girl must really be afraid of. And now go into the drawing-room, I hear Baroness Kniebreche, and she would never forgive you if you have not kissed her hand within the first five minutes.”
“Give me courage to go to execution,” whispered the Count.
“How?”
The Count did not answer, but took her hand off the keys, covered it with passionate kisses, and hurried in a state of emotion which was half affected and half real, into the drawing-room.
“He is a good creature after all,” murmured Carla, turning, and looking after him with her glass in her eye.
“That he is,” said a voice close to her.
“Mon Dieu! Signor Giraldi!”
“Always at your service.”
“Always at an opportune moment. You have not yet been into the drawing-room? Of course not. Come! let us have a few minutes’ chat. A tête-à-tête with you is a much envied privilege, which even Baroness Kniebreche herself would respect.”
“And then this respectable tête-à-tête is not quite so dangerous as the preceding one,” said Giraldi, sitting down by Carla on a little sofa, which stood at the end of the room beneath a candelabra on the wall. “Did you speak to him?”
“Just now!”
“And what did he answer?”
“He understands everything—except—”
“Not everything then?”
“Do not smile ironically; he is not quite a nonentity. He is clever enough, for example, to ask what the special interest is which you can have in his engagement with Elsa.”
“Do not be angry if I still smile a little,” said Giraldi. “What, the Count inquired as to the interest I have in the matter—he, on whose side the whole profit lies! But there! I confess the sale would have been delayed for a long time, as the General out of sheer obstinacy would not consent at all, and your brother, from some reasons of propriety, would not sell direct to the provisional board, and insisted upon a go-between; I further admit that the Count is not only in every other respect more convenient and more suitable than anyone else, but he is also more lucrative to us, because as a neighbour he can really pay more than anyone else. But that is an advantage on our side, which we fully compensate to him by granting him other advantages, with the details of which I will not trouble you. Believe me, my dear Fräulein von Wallbach, that the Count knows all this as well as I do, and he only affects ignorance and consequently hesitation for reasons which I will set before you. Firstly: It is always well not to see the hand which throws fortune into your lap; you can then, if convenient, be as ungrateful as you please. Secondly: He loves you, and—who can blame him?—he does not consider the matter quite hopeless, so long as you remain unmarried. Thirdly: It is not absolutely certain that Fräulein von Werben will accept him, and he has in fact better reasons for this uncertainty than his philosophy and vanity combined will allow him to imagine.”
“You are again referring to the fancy that Elsa is supposed to have for the handsome merchant-captain,” said Carla. “Much as I admire your acuteness, my dear Giraldi, here you pass the limits of my belief.”
“But supposing I have unquestionable evidence? supposing I have it in black and white, from the hand of Elsa’s most intimate friend, that little Fräulein von Strummin, who went off in such headlong haste, to startle us, from the security of her island, with the news of her engagement to the sculptor, Justus Anders. Pray do not laugh. What I am telling you is absolutely true. Herr Justus Anders, again, is the Captain’s most intimate friend; the two pairs of friends it appears have no secrets of any sort between them; Fräulein von Strummin also has none from her betrothed, and she writes in her letter, which arrived this morning, word for word—”
Giraldi had taken an elegant pocketbook from his coat pocket, and out of it a paper, which he unfolded.
“If anyone comes in, it is supposed to be a letter from the sculptor, Enrico Braga, from Milan. She writes the following, word for word—I am not responsible for the peculiar style:
“ ‘One thing more, dearest man, over which Lesto would howl himself to death with joy if he could understand it, and you also will rejoice like a child, as you always are. My Elsa loves your Reinhold with all her heart and soul, and that is saying something for anyone who knows as I do that she is all soul, and has the most divine heart in the world. I have no permission, still less any commission, to tell you this. But we are never again to play at hide-and-seek with one another, you know, and must also inspire our poor friends with courage, and the best way to do that is to be always saying to them, “He,” or in your case, “She loves you!” I have proved it at any rate with Elsa. Ah! my dearest heart, we ought indeed to feel ashamed of being so happy, when we think how unhappy our friends are, and only on account of these horrible “circumstances.” If I only knew who had devised these “circumstances” I should just like to have a few words with
