Five hours have passed since Zdena's arrival in Komaritz. Harry has been very good; that is, he has scarcely made an appearance; perhaps because he is conscious that when he is with Zdena he can hardly take his eyes off her, which, "under existing circumstances," might strike others as, to Bay the least, extraordinary.

After dinner he goes off partridge shooting, inviting his younger brother, who is devoted to him and whom he spoils like a mother, to accompany him. But Vips, as the family prefer to call him instead of Vladimir, although usually proud and happy to be thus distinguished by his elder brother, declines his invitation today. In fact, he has fallen desperately in love with Zdena. He is lying at her feet on the steps leading from the dwelling-room into the garden. His hair is beautifully brushed, and he has on his best coat.

The Countess Zriny is in her room, writing to her father confessor; FrÄulein Laut is at the piano, practising something by Brahms, to which musical hero she is almost as much devoted as is Rosamunda to her idolized Wagner; and Heda is sitting beside her cousin on the garden-steps, manufacturing with praiseworthy diligence crochetted stars of silk.

"What do you really think of Harry's betrothal, Zdena?" she begins at last, after a long silence.

At this question the blood rushes to Zdena's cheeks; nevertheless her answer sounds quite self-possessed.

"What shall I say? I was very much surprised."

"So was I," Heda confesses. "At first I was raging, for, after all, elle n'est pas de notre monde. But lately so many young men of our set have married nobodies that one begins to be accustomed to it, although I must say I am by no means enchanted with it yet. One's own brother,--it comes very near; but it is best to shut one's eyes in such cases. Setting aside the mÉsalliance, there is no objection to make to Paula. She is pretty, clover, frightfully cultivated,--too cultivated: it is rather bad form,--and for the rest, if she would only dress a little better, she would be quite presentable. And then she makes such advances; it is touching. The last time I dined at Dobrotschau I found in my napkin a butterfly pendant, with little sapphires and rubies in its diamond wings. I must show it to you; 'tis delicious," she rattles on.

"And what did you find in your napkin, Vips?" asks Zdena, who seems to herself to be talking of people with whom she has not the slightest connection, so strange is the whole affair.

"I? I was not at the dinner," says the boy.

"Not invited?" Zdena rallies him.

"Not invited!" Vips draws down the corners of his mouth scornfully. "Oh, indeed! not invited! Why, they invited the entire household,--even her!" He motions disdainfully towards the open door, through which FrÄulein Laut can be seen sitting at the piano. "Yes, we were even asked to bring Hector. But I stayed at home, because I cannot endure those Harfinks."

"Ah! your sentiments are also opposed to the mÉsalliance?" Zdena goes on, ironically.

"MÉsalliance!" shouts Vips. "You know very well that I am a Liberal!"

Vips finished reading "Don Carlos" about a fortnight ago, and even before then showed signs of Liberal tendencies.

The previous winter, when he attended the representation, at a theatre in Bohemia, of a new play of strong democratic colouring, he applauded all the freethinking tirades with such vehemence that his tutor was at last obliged, to the great amusement of the public, to hold back his hands.

"Ah, indeed, you are Liberal?" says Zdena. "I am delighted to hear it."

"Of course I am; but every respectable man must be a bit of an aristocrat," Vips declares, grandly, "and I cannot endure that Harry should marry that Paula. I told him so to his face; and I am not going to his wedding. I cannot understand why he takes her, for he's in love----" He suddenly pauses. Two gentlemen are coming through the garden towards the steps,--Harry and Lato.

Lato greets Zdena cordially. Heda expresses her surprise at Harry's speedy return from his shooting, and he, who always now suspects some hidden meaning in her remarks, flushes and frowns as he replies, "I saw Treurenberg in the distance, and so I turned back. Besides, the shooting all went wrong to-day," he adds, with a compassionate glance at the large hound now stretched out at his master's feet at the bottom of the steps. "He would scarcely stir: I cannot understand it, he is usually so fresh and gay, and loves to go shooting more than all the others; to-day he was almost sullen, and lagged behind,--hey, old boy?" He stoops and strokes the creature's neck, but the dog seems ill-tempered, and snaps at him.

"What! snap--snap at me! that's something new," Harry exclaims, frowning; then, seizing the animal by the collar, he shakes it violently and hurls it from him. "Be off!" he orders, sternly. The dog, as if suddenly ashamed, looks back sadly, and then walks slowly away, with drooping ears and tail. "I don't know what is the matter with the poor fellow!" Harry says, really troubled.

"He walks strangely; he seems stiff," Vladimir remarks, looking after the dog. "It seems to hurt him."

"Some good-for-nothing boy must have thrown a stone at him and bruised his back," Harry decides.

"You had better be careful with that dog," Heda now puts in her word. "Several dogs hereabouts have gone mad, and one roamed about the country for some time before he could be caught and killed."

"Pray, hush!" Harry exclaims, almost angrily, to his sister, with whom he is apt to disagree: "you always forebode the worst. If a fly stings one you are always sure that it has just come from an infected horse or cow."

"You have lately been so irritable, I cannot imagine what is the matter with you," lisps Hedwig.

Harry frowns.

Lato, meanwhile, has paid no heed to these remarks: he is apparently absorbed in his own thoughts, as, sitting on a lower step, he has been drawing with the handle of his riding-whip cabalistic signs in the gravel of the path. Now he looks up.

"I have a letter for you from Paula,--here it is," he observes, handing Harry a thick packet wrapped in light-blue tissue paper. While Harry, with a dubious expression of countenance, drops the packet into his coat-pocket, Lato continues: "Paula has all sorts of fancies about your absence. You have not been to Dobrotschau for two days. She is afraid you are ill, and that you are keeping it from her lest she should be anxious. She is coming over here with my wife tomorrow afternoon to look after you--I mean, to pay the ladies a visit." After Lato has given utterance to these words in a smooth monotone, his expression suddenly changes: his features betoken embarrassment, as, leaning towards Harry, he whispers, "I should like to speak with you alone. Can you give me a few minutes?"

Shortly afterwards, Harry rises and takes his friend with him to his own room, a spacious vaulted chamber next to the dining-room, which he shares with his young brother.

"Well, old fellow?" he begins, encouragingly, clapping Lato on the shoulder. Lato clears his throat, then slowly takes his seat in an arm-chair beside a table covered with a disorderly array of Greek and Latin books and scribbled sheets of paper. Harry sits opposite him, and for a while neither speaks.

The silence is disturbed only by the humming of the bees, and by the scratching at the window of an ancient apricot-tree, which seems desirous to call attention to what it has to say, but desists with a low rustle that sounds like a sigh. The tall clock strikes five; it is not late, and yet the room is dim with a gray-green light; the sunbeams have hard work to penetrate the leafy screen before the windows.

"Well?" Harry again says, at last, gently twitching his friend's sleeve.

"It is strange," Treurenberg begins; his voice has a hard, forced sound, he affects an indifference foreign to his nature, "but since my marriage I have had excellent luck at play. To speak frankly, it has been very convenient. Do not look so startled; wait until you are in my position. In the last few days, however, fortune has failed me. In my circumstances this is extremely annoying." He laughs, and flicks a grain of dust from his coat-sleeve.

Harry looks at him, surprised. "Ah! I understand. You want money. How much? If I can help you out I shall be glad to do so."

"Six hundred guilders," says Lato, curtly.

Harry can scarcely believe his ears. How can Lato come to him for such a trifle?

"I can certainly scrape together that much for you," he says, carelessly, and going to his writing-table he takes a couple of bank-notes out of a drawer. "Here!" and he offers the notes to his friend.

Lato hesitates for a moment, as if in dread of the money, then takes it, and puts it in his pocket.

"Thanks," he murmurs, hoarsely, and again there is a silence, which Lato is the first to break. "Why do you look at me so inquiringly?" he exclaims, almost angrily.

"Forgive me, Lato, we are such old friends."

"What do you want to know?"

"I was only wondering how a man in your brilliant circumstances could be embarrassed for so trifling a sum as six hundred guilders!"

"A man in my brilliant circumstances!" Lato repeats, bitterly. "Yes, you think, as does everybody else, that I am still living upon my wife's money. But you are mistaken. I tried it, indeed, for a while, but I was not made to play that part, no! It was different at first; my wife wished that I should have the disposal of her means, and I half cheated myself into the belief that her millions belonged to me. She came to me for every farthing. I used to rally her upon her extravagance; I played at magnanimity, and forgave her, and made her costly presents--yes--good heavens, how disgusting! But that is long since past; we have separate purses at present, thank God! I am often too shabby nowadays for the grand folk at Dobrotschau, but that does not trouble me." He drums nervously upon the table.

Harry looks more and more amazed. "But then I cannot see why--" he murmurs, but lacks the courage to finish the sentence.

"I know what you wish to say," Lato continues, bitterly. "You wonder why, under these circumstances, I cannot shake off the old habit. What would you have? Hitherto I have won almost constantly; now my luck has turned, and yet I cannot control myself. Those who have not this cursed love of play in their blood cannot understand it, but play is the only thing in the world in which I can become absorbed,--the only thing that can rid me of all sorts of thoughts which I never ought to entertain. There! now you know!"

He draws a deep, hoarse breath, then laughs a hard, wooden laugh. Harry is very uncomfortable: he has never before seen Lato like this. It distresses him to notice how his friend has changed in looks of late. His eyes are hollow and unnaturally bright, his lips are dry and cracked as from fever, and he is more restless than is his wont.

"Poor Lato! what fresh trouble have you had lately?" asks Harry, longing to express his sympathy.

Lato flushes crimson, then nervously curls into dog's-ears the leaves of a Greek grammar on the table, and shrugs his shoulders.

"Oh, nothing,--disagreeable domestic complications," he mutters, evasively.

"Nothing new has happened, then?" asks Harry, looking at him keenly.

Lato cannot endure his gaze. "What could have happened?" he breaks forth.

"How do you get along with your wife?"

"Not at all,--worse every day," Treurenberg says, dryly. "And now comes this cursed, meddling Polish jackanapes----"

"If the gentlemen please, the Baroness sends me to say that coffee is served." With these words Blasius makes his appearance at the door. Lato springs hastily to his feet. The conversation is at an end.