The Malady of the Century | Page 7

in England when I
was very young. I have been told that I have a slight English accent in
speaking German. Do you think so?"
"My ear is not expert enough for that," said Wilhelm apologetically.
"My friends," she chattered on, "nearly all speak French; but I think
English is much more uncommon. Fluent English in a German is
always proof of good education. Don't you think so?"
"Not always," said Wilhem frankly; "it might happen that one had
worked as a journeyman in America."
The girl turned up her nose a little at this rather unkind observation, but
Wilhelm went on:
"With your leave I would rather keep to our mother-tongue. To speak
in a foreign language with a fellow-country-woman without any
necessity would be like acting a charade, and a very uncomfortable
thing."
"I think a charade is very amusing," she answered; "but just as you like.

Opportunities of speaking English are not far to seek. Most of the
visitors at the hotel are English. I dare say you have noticed it already.
But they are not the best sort. They are common city people, who even
drop their h's, but who play at being lords on the Continent. Of course I
have learned already to tell a 'gentleman' from a 'snob.'"
Wilhelm smiled at the self-conscious importance with which she spoke.
His eyes wandered over her beautiful hair, to the tender curve of her
slender neck and beautiful shoulders, while she, feeling perfectly secure
again, settled herself comfortably. Her seat was a projecting piece of
stone, which had been converted by a soft covering of moss into a
delightful resting-place. An overhanging bush shaded it pleasantly. In
front lay a corner of the castle; across a smooth piece of turf and
through a wide gap in the wall they caught a view of the mountains, as
if painted by some artist's brush--a perfect composition which would
have put the crowning touch to his fame. The girl had been trying to
make a sketch of the view in a well-worn sketchbook which lay near.
"You have given a sufficient excuse for your sketches by your feeling
for natural beauty," remarked Wilhelm. "May I look at the page?"
"Oh," she said, somewhat confused, "my will is of the best, but I can do
so little," and she hesitatingly gave him her album. He took it and also
the pencil, looked alternately at the mountains and on the page of the
book, and without asking leave began to improve upon it, strengthening
a line here, lightening a shadow and giving greater breadth, and then
growing deeply interested in his work, he sat down without ceremony
on the mossy bank, took a piece of india- rubber, and erasing here,
adding lines there, sometimes laying in a shadow, giving strength to the
foreground and lightness to the background, he ended by making a
really pretty and artistic sketch.
The girl had watched him wonderingly, and said as he returned the
album, "But you are a great artist," and without letting him speak she
went on, "and by your appearance I had taken you for a student! But
you are not in the least like a student, nor in fact like a German either. I
have often met Indian princes in society in London, and I think you are
very much like them."

Wilhelm smiled. "There is a grain of truth in what you say, although
you overrate it a little. A great artist I certainly am not, nor even a little
one, but I have always observed much and painted a good deal myself,
and originally I thought of devoting myself to an artist's career; and if I
have nothing in common with Indian princes, and am merely a plebeian
German, I very likely have a drop of Indian blood in my veins."
"Really," she said, with curiosity.
"Yes, my mother was a Russian German living in Moscow, and whose
father, a Thuringian, had married a Russian girl of gypsy descent.
Through this grandmother, whom I never knew, I am related by remote
genealogical descent to Indians. But you do not look like a German
either, with your beautiful dark hair and eyebrows."
She took this personal compliment in good part as she answered
quickly:
"There is some reason for that too. Just as you have Indian, I have
French blood in my veins. My father's mother was a Colonial, her
maiden name was Du Binache."
So they gossiped on like old acquaintances. Young and beautiful as
they were, they found the deepest pleasure in one another, and the cold
feeling of strangeness melted as by a charm. They were awakened to
the consciousness that half an hour earlier neither of them had an idea
of the other's existence, by the appearance of a