Maria Theresa looked earnestly in the face of Louis. She had never done so before; and then turning her eyes again on the picture, she drew a deep sigh.
"Come will not Your Highness sing?" asked the Countess, presenting a duet.
"No," replied she, "I shall go, and beg mamma, to permit you to sing alone;" then whispering her, as she was leaving her seat, she put her arm round her neck, and softly said--"Oh, my happy Otteline! He that you are to marry, has both a handsome and a noble countenance!"
Louis could not escape hearing this; nor seeing the quick pressure with which the Countess strained her young charge to her breast; who in some apprehension that she had been overheard, broke away, with a slight blush tinging her lilly complexion.
He was now alone in the music-room, with her, whose presence he felt in every nerve. The parting whisper of the Princess; and the responsive action of the Countess, followed by a fluttering sigh, which now vibrated in his heart, made him tremble for himself. He knew not how to fly, and he felt it was perilous to remain. Hastily closing a music-book, he said with a forced smile, "Since the Arch-duchess declines singing, my duty here terminates!" and with a hurrying bow, he started from the instrument.
Otteline was, now, in a no less agitated state than himself. She read in his averted looks, and haste to leave her, that she was no longer to consider him as her lover; and, not suspecting the real cause, her own ambitious views suggested to her, that his father's higher prospects were the origin of this changed demeanour. Aware that carrying matters with too lofty a hand had lost her the son of the Marquis Santa Cruz, she determined on a different mode with that of Ripperda; and while a large drapery of the curtained arch was yet between him, and the observation of the company in the saloon, she ventured in rapid but suppressed accents, to murmur out--"Oh, Marquis, why are you not the obscure De Phaffenberg?--Then, we should not have met:--or never parted thus!"
Her voice had arrested him. Her words transfixed his heart. He stood, but he did not speak. She resumed.--
"It is as I foresaw. My enemies have prevailed!--Your father objects to my humble birth; and you turn from me, to seek a more illustrious bride?"