Meanwhile Giraldi had wandered farther through the overcrowded rooms, looking round him from time to time to see if he could discover Ottomar, uncertain whether he wished to do so, or whether he should wait for him, whether it would not be better to go away now and leave things to take their course. The train for Sundin started at . It was now ; he had still half an hour. Half an hour! Half a minute would have been enough generally for him to decide the most weighty matters. But a man grew stupid from dealing with fools. And now that boy also must get in his way!
The sudden and quite unexpected meeting with Antonio had troubled Giraldi greatly. He had not thought about the young man for a long time; he had almost forgotten him, as he did all those whom he did not require immediately, or might not require again, for the furtherance of his plans. He required Antonio no longer. For the net which he was weaving for Ottomar and Ferdinanda, Bertalda was a much more accommodating and convenient tool. About Reinhold and Elsa he had long known all that he wished to know; and over the ardour with which at first he had followed up the idea of making out the handsome young man to be the son who should restore the already shaken relations between him and Valerie, he had himself smiled since. If Brother Ambrosio, indeed, had entered willingly into the affair—if by his hints to Valerie he had awakened her longing, if not hope, for the lost son! But the experiment had entirely failed; it had even rather had the contrary result, and had shown him more clearly than ever that her heart was more and more, perhaps was entirely, turned against him. And even if, perhaps under other circumstances, he returned to his plan, there was no use thinking any more of Antonio, against whom Valerie’s suspicions had once been roused. She would not now believe in the strongest proof, to say nothing of a more or less well-invented fiction. And it was for this, for this hollow mockery, that he had inspired that passionate spirit with brilliant hopes and ambitious dreams, which must soon prove themselves an empty nothing, in which the young man himself perhaps no longer believed. There was sometimes a wild glare in the black eyes that had suggested to him that the young man would sooner or later go mad—perhaps was already so; and at the moment in which he swore to him that he should be revenged upon his mortal enemy, a smile had passed like a flash across his usually firm-set lips, which only admitted of one interpretation. If he ever learnt that the man who had promised to help him to gain the woman he loved had driven her into the arms of his rival, would it not be well while it was yet time to give the murderous weapon another direction—the right direction—to the heart of their mutual enemy? To say to Antonio, “I must confess to you, my son, that what you have above all things feared is true—the woman you love is now in his arms. I could not prevent it. Kill me! Or, if you would avenge yourself and me, keep your dagger ready—I know you always carry it with you. In a few minutes he will be here, still intoxicated with his happiness. Strike him! strike him down!”
Giraldi had stood leaning against the doorpost, lost in his bloodthirsty fancies as in a dream, looking with fixed eyes upon the throng, without seeing anything. Suddenly he started. There in front of him, only separated by the width of the room, was Ottomar. He was talking to one or two other officers, and still had his back to him. He could still get away through the door against which he was leaning into the next room, and out of the house. That would be best. After all his arrangements were made, the manager might give up the stage to his puppets. What need was there of a dagger in this domestic drama? A few dishonoured bills, a good deal of gossip, truth cunningly mixed with falsehood and cleverly insinuated in society, and the wished-for result could not be long in coming, even if one or other of the wires failed in its effect. “To be too busy is some danger,” as Hamlet says over the body of Polonius.
And Giraldi slipped back into the room from which he had come, and, passing through some side-rooms and down the brilliantly-lighted marble staircase, gained the vestibule and cloakroom.
Some guests were still arriving—a few ladies who to judge from their remarks, had been kept late in the ballet, and an elderly gentleman, who took off his fur coat whilst the servant was helping Giraldi on with his. The Italian hastily turned up his collar, but the other had already recognised him, and stopped him as he was going.
“What, Signor Giraldi! Are you going already?”
“I am tired to death, Councillor, and the heat and noise upstairs are amazing.”
“I have already been three times today to your house in vain. I must talk to you at least for a moment. What do you think of it, my dear friend—what do you think of it?”
“Of what?”
The Councillor almost let his crush-hat fall. “Of what? Good heavens! Is it possible to talk about
