She descended the stairs, and left the mill. The night wind of spring refreshed her hot cheeks, and stars filled the clear sky with glittering arabesques. Kitty was ashamed of her idle dreaming; but had it not assailed her like a sudden vertigo which may suddenly attack even the healthiest and strongest of human kind?
From a distance she saw through the trees the glimmer of the lights at the villa; and as she entered the hall-door she was greeted by the sound of the piano. It was a magnificent instrument, but was being shamefully maltreated at present. This was one of the Frau President’s reception evenings,—old and young came to take tea,—the elders went to the card-tables, and the young people amused themselves with music and conversation as best pleased them.
Kitty made a hasty toilette, and entered the drawing-room,—the large balconied apartment on the ground-floor. There were but few guests this evening; only one card-table was in demand, and the tea-table, usually surrounded by young ladies, looked lonely and deserted.
Henriette was seated at it, making the tea; again she had scarlet ribbons in her blonde hair, and a sleeveless jacket of the same brilliant colour over a light blue silk dress. Her small, pallid face looked ghostly in so theatric a costume, but her beautiful eyes shone with an almost unearthly fire. "Bruck has come!" she whispered, breathlessly, into Kitty’s ear, pointing through the adjoining music-room, where the grand piano was being so punished, towards Flora’s study. "Kitty, he really seems grown, so tall and majestic—— Good heavens! do not look ’so sober, steadfast, and demure’!" she hastily interrupted herself. She was strangely agitated. "They are all so cross to-day; Moritz has had a dispatch which has made him absent-minded, and grandmamma is dreadfully out of sorts because her rooms are so empty. But I am so happy,—so happy! Do you know, Kitty, that the day before yesterday, when I had that attack, I really imagined that Bruck would see me next as a corpse? That must not be. I _will not_ die without him!"
It was the first time she had ever spoken to Kitty of dying; and it was well that the fingers scrambling hither and thither over the keys in the music-room seemed just now endowed with fresh energy, and that three elderly gentlemen, standing by the chimney-piece, raised their voices in the ardour of their discussion, for the invalid’s last exclamation was loud and passionately uttered. Kitty gave her a warning glance, and the Frau President looked keenly and disapprovingly over her eye-glass towards the tea-table. Henriette instantly controlled herself. "Nonsense! how can any one object to my saying so?" she said, lightly shrugging her shoulders. "No one likes to die alone. One has a physician in order that his presence may inspire with hope even one’s last breath."