The Malady of the Century | Page 7

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 girl in the gap in the wall, who seemed very much surprised at the sight of their evident intimacy. The young lady stood up rather hastily and went a few steps toward the newcomer, a servant-maid, who had brought a cloak for her mistress, and took charge of her album, sunshade, and large straw hat.
"Is it so late already?" she said, with a naive surprise, which left no room for doubt even to Wilhelm's modesty.
"Certainly, fraulein," said the maid, pointing with her hand to the distant mountain, whose peaks were already clothed with the orange hue of twilight; then she looked alternately at her young mistress and the strange gentleman, whose handsome face she inwardly noted.
"Do you think of making any stay here?" asked the young lady of Wilhelm, who followed slowly.
"Yes, certainly," he answered at once.
"Then we may become good friends. My parents will be glad to make your acquaintance. I did not tell