"I must go home: my grandmother is expecting me," Erika murmured.
"I should think you could consent to bestow a few minutes upon your old father, if only out of regard for your mother's memory," Strachinsky observed, assuming his loftiest expression.
Regard for her mother's memory! Certainly, she would not let him starve or suffer absolute want. "Do you need anything?" she asked.
"No," he replied, curtly, with a show of wounded feeling.
Then followed a pause. She looked round, ignorant of where she was, for during this most unwelcome interview she had continued to walk on without observing whither she was going.
"Will you show me the way to Maximilian Street?" she asked him.
"To the left, here," he replied, laconically; then, with lifted eyebrows, he observed, "Unpractical idealist that I am, I was disposed to forget and forgive the outrageous ingratitude with which you have treated me in these latter years,--nay, always. I had even resolved to call upon your betrothed; although that would have been to reverse the order of affairs. But I perceive that your arrogance and pride are greater than ever. No matter! I only hope you may not be punished for them too severely!" With these words, he touched his hat with grotesque dignity and was gone before she could collect herself to reply.
Meanwhile, the sky had become overcast; a keen wind began to blow, and large drops of rain were falling before Erika reached the door of the lodgings in Maximilian Street.
As she mounted the staircase she heard her grandmother's voice in the drawing-room and recognized the cordial tone which she used when speaking to the few people in the world with whom she was in genuine sympathy. Nevertheless, agitated by her late interview, Erika inwardly deplored the arrangement of their apartments which made it impossible that she should reach her bedroom without passing through the drawing-room. She opened the door: her grandmother was seated on the sofa, and near her, in an arm-chair, with his back to the casement window, was a man in civilian's dress. He arose, looking so tall that it seemed to Erika he must strike his head against the low ceiling of the room. She did not instantly recognize him, as he stood with his back to the light, but before he had advanced a step she exclaimed, "Goswyn!" and ran to him with both hands extended. When, with rather formal courtesy, he kissed one of the hands thus held out as if seeking succour, and then dropped it without any very cordial pressure, she was assailed by a certain embarrassment: she remembered that she should have called him Herr von Sydow, and that it became her to receive her rejected suitor with a more measured dignity. But she was not self-possessed today. The shock of meeting her step-father had unstrung her nerves; the numbness which had of late paralyzed sensation began to depart; her youthful heart throbbed almost as loudly as it had done when she had first ascended the thickly-carpeted staircase in Bellevue Street, as strongly as upon that brilliant Thursday at the Countess Brock's, when, suddenly overcome by the memory of her unhappy mother, she had fled from the crowd of her admirers to sob out her misery in some lonely corner.