The Master of Brunneck was sitting in the veranda-parlour, reading his newspapers, while his cousin, stationed before a side-table, took up and carefully examined first one and then another of several elegant articles of toilette which lay spread out before her. They were patterns of new fashions, which had just arrived from town, and were destined to form part of Hedwig's trousseau, now in active course of preparation.
The Councillor did not appear to be much interested in his reading. He turned over the pages absently, and at length looked up from his paper, and said in an impatient tone:
'Have not you made your choice, or done looking over those things yet, Lina? Why don't you get Hedwig to help you?'
'Hedwig has declared, as usual, that she intends to leave it all to me. I must make a selection by the light of my own unaided judgment.'
'I don't understand how it is the girl shows so little interest in these matters. They all relate to her own trousseau, and formerly dress was to her an affair of state.'
'Formerly--yes,' said Aunt Lina emphatically.
A pause ensued. The Councillor seemed to have something on his mind. Presently he laid aside his newspaper, and stood up.
'Lina, I have something to say to you--Hedwig does not quite please me.'
'Nor me either,' murmured the old lady; but she avoided looking at her cousin, and kept her eyes fixed on a lace-pattern she had taken up.
'Not?' cried Rüstow, who always grew quarrelsome when he was at all worried. 'Now I should have thought her present manner would have been exactly what you would like. According to you, Hedwig was always too superficial and light-minded; now she is growing so wonderfully profound in her feelings that she is forgetting how to laugh. Why, she is never contradictious, never up to tricks of any sort! Upon my word, it is enough to drive one mad!'
'What, that she has given up contradiction, and all her foolish tricks?'
Rüstow took no notice of this ironical interruption. He went up to his cousin, and posted himself before her in a menacing attitude.
'What has happened to the girl? What has become of my merry, saucy Hedwig, my madcap who was never weary of frolic and fun? I must and will know.'
'You need not look at me so fiercely, Erich,' said Aunt Lina calmly. 'I have not injured your child in any way.'