"Kitty, what a change is this!" he whispered, bending over her. "It is Clotilde, your sister, but infinitely more beautiful, more richly gifted!"
She put up her hand to remove his from her shoulder; but Moritz possessed himself of it, and held it as if in a life-long grasp. For the others it was only a pretty, innocent picture: the guardian was proudly caressing his ward,—the child entrusted to his care by his father-in-law. Henriette’s pale face alone flushed crimson; she smiled oddly. Doctor Bruck, standing beside her, looked at his watch, then quietly gave Henriette his hand, and took advantage of the general commotion to withdraw unobserved.
A week had passed since the last reception-evening: "a terribly fatiguing week!" the Frau President sighed, in a tone of exhaustion, which did not, however, prevent her from immediately afterwards finding a great deal of fault with her modiste for not arranging with sufficient taste the toilette in which she was to appear on the eighth of these fatiguing evenings. The train was not long enough; the lace not broad enough; and the silk not so heavy as was desirable. There had been several large festivities in aristocratic circles, and, in addition, Flora had been requested to compose and recite verses at some tableaux vivants arranged at a small fête at court. "There was hardly time to breathe."
Henriette, in consequence of her invalid condition, could take no part in these exciting entertainments, and Kitty remained at home with her, although she was always included in the invitations to the family. They drank tea alone together in the music-room, and Kitty was unwearied in her efforts to dissipate Henriette’s melancholy, by lively talk, and music. Keen as was the invalid’s power of discrimination, impressed as she was by the superficiality and unreality of a life given up to society, she was, and always must be, a child of the world of fashion; she had grown up in the drawing-room of her aristocratic grandmother, and often, when the sound of rolling carriages bound for ball or opera was heard in the distance, she would smile bitterly, and liken herself to a broken-down war-horse, weak and lame, who nevertheless at the blast of the trumpet pricks his ears and longs for the strife.