Baroness--regret it deeply--I have a letter to deliver to the Countess Dey."

"I will go with you, I will go with you," cries the old lady, animatedly. "Give me your arm and imagine it was forty years ago."

And he, in his quality of man of the world condemned to perpetual politeness, gives her his arm and walks on laughing and chatting, at the side of the colossally stout woman with the servile, nodding little head--a martyr of bon ton.

The Colonel and his friend were both fond of gossip--with the difference that the Colonel, an independent man, related scandal for his own pleasure, while the Baroness very often did so to please others. Her name was Baroness Klettenstein, but usually she was simply called Klette (burr) because she could never be shaken off. She also had a second equally pretty nickname. In consequence of her indestructible life at the cost of others--she was remarkably robust for her sixty-six years--she had been christened the "immortal Cantharide." Hungrily she crept from one house to another, gained admission by a budget of malicious news, which, as we have seen, she collected indefatigably, at times even invented. She always rendered homage to the rising, never remembered even to have known the setting sun. And when, weary of her tiring parasitism, she rested in her tiny room at Prague, which was the only home she possessed, she swore that she would have been just as unselfish, just as truth-loving and discreet as others, if only her income had sufficed for her needs.

Out of breath and panting, she entered the park on the arm of the Colonel. The bandmaster, a Pole with an interesting, revolutionist face, swings the baton with graceful languor. The ladies, leaning back in their white chairs on either side of the broad gravel walk, look weary, limp, and melancholy in their gay gowns, like flowers which a too hot sunbeam has withered and faded. They are worn, thin, and colorless, but for their toilets; but the transparent paleness of their faces, the excessive thinness of their forms lends them a certain charm, something fairylike and distinguished, refinedly aristocratic and Undine-like. Invalidism is less becoming to the men at the cure; many of them resemble corpses which an enterprising physiologist has exhumed to experiment upon.

The first row of tables are already occupied, but an attendant, understanding the Klette's glance, brings forward another from the rear and places it where she is told. Hereupon the Baroness calls for coffee for two, and invites the Colonel in the most polite manner to sit beside her, and as he cannot deny that from this spot, purposely chosen by the Klette for a fine view of all present, he can soonest espy Countess Dey whom he has sought in vain, he resolves to await her here.

Slowly the guests stroll along the promenade: most noticeable of all, admired or at least stared at by all, Linda Harfink. Her large, dark hat with its scarlet feather throws a mysterious shadow on her pale face; a black lace scarf is twisted round her throat and tied in a careless knot behind. Her pale green dress clings tightly, and yet in folds around her figure. Near her walks a young man, blond and handsome; in spite of his handsome figure and Nero-profile, too foppish and dandified, too strikingly dressed in the latest fashion, to be taken for any one but an elegant parvenu.

"Who is he?" asks Klette, her mouth full of bread, a coffee cup in her hand.

"A young Baron Rhœden, born Grau. The family was ennobled five years ago, and since then only call themselves by the predicate," replies the Colonel. "A cousin of Linda--very nice fellow--garçon coiffeur, but very nice for his sphere--seems to be uncommonly smitten with his cousin."

Through the evening air floats a sentimental potpourri from the "Flying Dutchman." The Harfinks, who wish to return the same evening to Marienbad, where they are staying, have left the park. Gazing down in coquettish silence at a rose in her hand, Linda has vanished through the gateway of the park, on the arm of her cousin, in the golden light of the setting sun.

"Colonel!" now cries a gay voice.

"Ah, Countess!" Intently gazing after Linda's seductive apparition, the Colonel had not noticed the approach of the so-long-awaited Countess Dey. Now he springs up, "falls at her feet, kisses her hands," naturally only with words, and searches all his pockets for the letter for her.

The Countess meanwhile, with lorgnon at her eyes, indifferently gazes at her surroundings.

"I just met a little person who is considered a great beauty--Hopfing or Harpfink is her name, I believe. They say that Lanzberg is engaged to her--that cannot be true?"

"I have heard so too," says the Colonel. "Curious match--what do you say to it, Countess?"

"Felix Lanzberg is as unfortunate as ever," murmurs the Countess.

But Klette shrugs her fat shoulders and hisses: "What does it matter if a certain Lanzberg makes a mésalliance?"

II.

A tall form, slender, perhaps too narrow-shouldered, with too long arms, a small head with bushy, light brown hair fastened in a thick knot low on her neck, a golden furze at neck and temples, a pale, almost sallow, little face with large blue eyes, which love to look up and away from the earth like those of a devout cherub, a short, small nose, a little mouth which, with the corners slightly curving up, seems destined by nature for continual laughter, but later evidently disturbed by fate in this gay calling, in every movement the dreamy grace of a woman who, when scarcely grown, had experienced a great misfortune or a severe illness, all this pervaded by a breath of fanciful earnestness, melancholy tenderness, and united into an harmonious whole--Elsa--the sister of the "certain Felix Lanzberg," and since five years the wife of the Freiherr von Garzin.

She is like a flower, but not like one of those proud, luxuriant roses which pass their life amid sunbeams and butterflies, but rather one of those delicate, white blossoms which have grown in deep shadow during a cold spring, and which close their petals from the sun.

"Mamma, the letters dance again to-day," complains a little voice, the voice of Felicie, Elsa's four-year-old daughter, who with bare legs, her little form encased in a red embroidered gray linen frock, her towzled yellow curls fastened with a red ribbon, stands before her mamma.

Elsa sits in a deep arm-chair, an alphabet on her knees. "Look very hard at the naughty letters and they will be quiet," says she with a smile. She finds that Felicie makes that excuse of dancing letters too often.

The child tries to look hard at the letters.

"M--a," spells she. "Mamma," she cries in great triumph at having spelled out a word which she knows so well.

"Bravo, Litzi!"

Litzi leans closely, closely against her mother's knees. "Mamma, the letters are tired," whispers she, "they want to go to sleep." And Elsa this time thinks that one cannot expect too much industry from such a tiny little bit of humanity, so she kisses the child and says, "Well, put them to bed, then." Whereupon, Litzi, with much pretext of business, puts the alphabet away in the drawer, while Elsa, leaning back comfortably in her arm-chair, her feet crossed, her arms clasped around her knees, gives herself up to that lazy thinking which with happy people is called reverie, with unhappy ones brooding. The room in which she sits, half boudoir, half library, furnished with tall book-cases, étagères, old faience and Japanese lacquer work, and filled with the perfume of the sweetest flowers,