“Oh, Hildegarde!” cried Crescenz, pushing back her work-table in order to be able to see better from the window. “Oh, Hildegarde—look, look! There is Mr. Hamilton driving such a beautiful sledge up our street; and the horses are prancing and dancing, and shaking their red tassels and silver bells! Oh, how pretty! How I wish he would take me out with him!”

“Babette!” cried Mr. Rosenberg, from the next room, “Mr. Hamilton is just passing our house, and seems in perfect health. How long do you mean his quarantine to last?”

“I have no objection to his returning to-morrow,” answered Madame Rosenberg, who was arranging one of the chests of drawers in the drawing-room. “You may tell him so, if you like, this afternoon.”

“Not I!” said her husband. “You banished him, and you may recall him, too; if, however, you really wish him to return, you had better make haste, for he seems to be amusing himself very well at Havard’s, and is always surrounded by a number of acquaintances. I must confess I miss him more than I expected.”

“I wish him to return, of course,” said Madame Rosenberg, pushing in the drawers with some violence; “but, for another week or so, I must say I have no objection to his remaining where he is. I can hardly believe that he will escape the cholera—he is so careless! Always going out without a cloak, and being wet through!—wearing thin boots and no flannel waistcoat! Heating his stove and opening his windows! Running out in the middle of the night every time there is an alarm about a house on fire! What can one expect from such doings?”

“As you please, my dear,” said Mr. Rosenberg, contentedly. “You know I never had any fancy for lodgers in our house; he is the first I have been able to tolerate. I think, however, you should not allow him to pay for his apartments here and at Havard’s too!”

“Oh, of course not,” said his wife; “though I am sure that is the very last thing he would think about—he is excessively careless about money.”

“So it seems—and I suspect he is spending more than is necessary at present. He gives suppers every night.”

“I don’t believe that!”

“You may believe it—or rather believe me, for I supped with him after the theatre yesterday.”

“You?”

“Yes. There were also three young Englishmen and that little Lieutenant-major who goes everywhere, playing cards and making himself agreeable.”

“Lieutenant-major! How did Hamilton become acquainted with him?”

“Oddly enough; he met him in the English Gardens one evening before he went to Seon, and either knocked him down or was knocked down by him—I really forget which; but a fact it is that Hamilton invited him to supper without remembering his name, and they insisted on my introducing them formally to each other.”

“Well, to be sure!” said Madame Rosenberg. “If ever I heard of such a thing!”

“He wishes exceedingly to return to us,” continued her husband; “he said so when I was leaving—indeed, he gave me to understand that his guests were merely invited to prevent him from thinking too much of our quiet household!”

“Oh, if that be the case, I consider it a sort of duty to bring him back here and out of the way of temptation,” said Madame Rosenberg, joining her husband, and leaving Hildegarde and Crescenz alone.

They had been interested auditors of this conversation as they sat together working.

“How I like him for inviting that Lieutenant-major to supper without knowing his name! Don’t you? It is so English! I am very glad he is coming back to us!”

“His return ought to be a matter of indifference to you,” said Hildegarde, without looking up.

“But I cannot be so indifferent as you are!” said Crescenz, petulantly. “And, though I am going to be married to Major Stultz, Lina Berger says that Mr. Hamilton may still be ‘mein schatz’ just the same, and no harm!”

“Lina Berger talks great nonsense,” said Hildegarde, with heightened colour. “This is, however, worse than nonsense.”

“And yet she could give you some good advice, if you choose to listen to her,” observed Crescenz, nodding her head sagaciously.

“I do not require any advice from a person I so thoroughly dislike and despise.”

“Oh, that’s just the same with her; she says she always disliked you, but that she despises you now that you have fallen in love with Theodor Biedermann!”

“What an absurd idea!” said Hildegarde, contemptuously. “Marie de Hoffmann has already told me something of that kind.”

“Lina told me long ago that Mr. Biedermann did not think you at all handsome!”

“That I think very probable,” said Hildegarde.

“And she says now, he is just the person to teach you not to fall in love without provocation!”

“I think he is more likely to teach me to write German grammatically,” answered Hildegarde, with a careless laugh.

“And do you really not care for anybody, and you a whole year older than I am!” exclaimed Crescenz, with unfeigned astonishment. “Lina first thought you liked Mr. Hamilton, until I assured her you hated him. Then she said you had taken a wild kind of fancy to our cousin Oscar. Then she thought you were pretending to like Count Zedwitz on account of his rank and——”

“I am sure I ought to be obliged to you, Crescenz, for discussing my affairs in this manner with my great enemy,” said Hildegarde, indignantly.

“Oh, don’t be angry. I assure you she talked all herself. I did not say a single word——”

“You forget having confessed that you told her all I confided to you about Count Zedwitz.”

“But you never confided in me at all, Hildegarde! All I know was what I overheard when you were so angry about the letter, you know!”

“I remember speaking to you about that letter, and telling you to rejoice that you had never any annoyance of the kind.”

“But I assure you, Lina had heard everything from the Doctor——”

“Pshaw!” cried Hildegarde, pushing back her chair, “there is no use talking to you!”

“I am quite prepared for remarks of this kind,” said Crescenz, with a ludicrous imitation of Hildegarde’s natural dignity of manner; “Lina says there is no bearing you since I have been engaged to be married!”

“So,” said Hildegarde, throwing down her work; “but I do not quite understand the——”

“Oh, it is easily understood—you are older, and think you ought to have been first.”

“This is really too absurd,” cried Hildegarde, laughing good-humouredly.

“Oh, laugh as much as you please—but since we have returned from Seon—you have become quite a different person!”

“Did Lina put that into your head also?” asked Hildegarde, quickly.

“Oh, no,” cried Crescenz, while her eyes filled with tears, “I did not require Lina to point that out to me. Silly as you think me—I can feel—you are quite changed.”

Hildegarde bit her lip—walked to the window—came hastily back again, and throwing her arms round her sister, kissed her cheek, while she whispered: “Dear girl, I am not in the least changed in my affection for you; but you know yourself that every word I speak to you is repeated to Lina Berger; and how can you expect me to trust you?”

“But,” said Crescenz, looking up, “but you know I often repeated what you said when we were at school, and you only scolded a little sometimes. Now you scarcely ever get into a passion, and are so cold and so careful what you say—just like Mademoiselle Hortense!”

“Like Mademoiselle Hortense?”

“Oh, I don’t mean that you have her thick nose and high shoulders,” said Crescenz, smiling through her tears, “but you scarcely take any notice of me, and are always talking of books with Hamilton!” Hildegarde was silent. “And then you speak English now more than French, and Lina says——”

“Don’t tell me what she says, don’t name her to me again,” cried Hildegarde, impatiently.

“No—no, I won’t,” said Crescenz, alarmed.

“Odious person,” continued Hildegarde, turning away, “I can never forgive her for having embittered the last weeks we shall probably ever spend together.”

“Well,” said Crescenz, drying her eyes, “at all events, we shall get on better after my marriage. You know you must have a sort of respect for me then.”

Hildegarde turned round to see if her sister were joking; but Crescenz looked perfectly serious.

“Respect is due to married persons,” she continued, neatly folding up the work which her sister had thrown on the chair. “Mamma says so—and then, you know, I shall be quite another sort of person, when I am the mother of a family——”

Hildegarde laughed unrestrainedly.

“Madame Lustig says I may have a dozen children! They shall all have pretty names—not one of them shall be called Blazius, that I am determined—they shall be Albert, Maximilian, Ferdinard, Adolph, Philibert.”

“Philibert is not a pretty name,” said Hildegarde, interrupting her merrily.

“Don’t you think so? Well, we can choose another, Conrad for instance?”

“Or Oscar?”

“Oh, no, because I should imagine a sort of resemblance to cousin Oscar, and I don’t—quite like him—that is, not very much, though he is my cousin. He is very cross sometimes, indeed almost always to your friend Marie—but, oh! Hildegarde, one very pretty name we have forgotten, and of a very handsome person too—Alfred! Mr. Hamilton, you know—is not Alfred a pretty name?”

“Yes.”

“And he is certainly handsome? Even you must allow that?”

Hildegarde was spared the answer, for Madame Rosenberg entered the room, and having discovered that the tip of Crescenz’s little nose was red, immediately declared it was from want of exercise, and sent both sisters to play at battledore and shuttlecock in the nursery with their brothers.

She then despatched a messenger to Hamilton which caused his immediate return to her house.