Mrs. Wagner's indignation found its way at last into words. "I deserved this," she said, "when I allowed you to speak to me. Let me pa.s.s, if you please."

Madame Fontaine made a last effort--she fell on her knees. "Your hard words have roused my pride," she said; "I have forgotten that I am a disgraced woman; I have not spoken humbly enough. See! I am humbled now--I implore your mercy on my knees. This is not only _my_ last chance; it is Minna's last chance. Don't blight my poor girl's life, for my fault!"

"For the second time, Madame Fontaine, I request you to let me pa.s.s.

"Without an answer to my entreaties? Am I not even worthy of an answer?"

"Your entreaties are an insult. I forgive you the insult."

Madame Fontaine rose to her feet. Every trace of agitation disappeared from her face and her manner. "Yes," she said, with the unnatural composure that was so strangely out of harmony with the terrible position in which she stood--"Yes, from your point of view, I can't deny that it may seem like an insult. When a thief, who has already robbed a person of money, asks that same person to lend her more money, by way of atoning for the theft, there is something very audacious (on the surface) in such a request. I can't fairly expect you to understand the despair which wears such an insolent look. Accept my apologies, madam; I didn't see it at first in that light. I must do what I can, while your merciful silence still protects me from discovery--I must do what I can between this and the sixth of the month. Permit me to open the door for you." She opened the drawing-room door, and waited.

Mrs. Wagner's heart suddenly quickened its beat.

Under what influence? Could it be fear? She was indignant with herself at the bare suspicion of it. Her face flushed deeply, under the momentary apprehension that some outward change might betray her. She left the room, without even trusting herself to look at the woman who stood by the open door, and bowed to her with an impenetrable a.s.sumption of respect as she pa.s.sed out.

Madame Fontaine remained in the drawing-room.

She violently closed the door with a stroke of her hand--staggered across the room to a sofa--and dropped on it. A hoa.r.s.e cry of rage and despair burst from her, now that she was alone. In the fear that someone might hear her, she forced her handkerchief into her mouth, and fastened her teeth into it. The paroxysm pa.s.sed, she sat up on the sofa, and wiped the perspiration from her face, and smiled to herself. "It was well I stopped here," she thought; "I might have met someone on the stairs."

As she rose to leave the drawing-room, Fritz's voice reached her from the far end of the corridor.

"You are out of spirits, Minna. Come in, and let us try what a little music will do for you."

The door leading into the recess was opened. Minna's voice became audible next, on the inner side of the curtains.

"I am afraid I can't sing to-day, Fritz. I am very unhappy about mamma.

She looks so anxious and so ill; and when I ask what is troubling her, she puts me off with an excuse."

The melody of those fresh young tones, the faithful love and sympathy which the few simple words expressed, seemed to wring with an unendurable pain the whole being of the mother who heard them. She lifted her hands above her head, and clenched them in the agony which could only venture to seek that silent means of relief. With swift steps, as if the sound of her daughter's voice was unendurable to her, she made for the door. But her movements, on ordinary occasions the perfection of easy grace, felt the disturbing influence of the agitation that possessed her. In avoiding a table on one side, as she pa.s.sed it, she struck against a chair on the other.

Fritz instantly opened the curtains, and looked through. "Why, here is mamma!" he exclaimed, in his hearty boyish way.

Minna instantly closed the piano, and hastened to her mother. When Madame Fontaine looked at her, she paused, with an expression of alarm. "Oh, how dreadfully pale and ill you look!" She advanced again, and tried to throw her arms round her mother, and kiss her. Gently, very gently, Madame Fontaine signed to her to draw back.

"Mamma! what have I done to offend you?"

"Nothing, my dear."

"Then why won't you let me come to you?"

"No time now, Minna. I have something to do. Wait till I have done it."

"Not even one little kiss, mamma?"

Madame Fontaine hurried out of the room without answering and ran up the stairs without looking back. Minna's eyes filled with tears. Fritz stood at the open door, bewildered.

"I wouldn't have believed it, if anybody had told me," he said; "your mother seems to be afraid to let you touch her."

Fritz had made many mistaken guesses in his time--but, for once, he had guessed right. She _was_ afraid.

CHAPTER XII

As the presiding genius of the household, Madame Fontaine was always first in the room when the table was laid for the early German dinner. A knife with a speck on the blade, a plate with a suspicion of dirt on it, never once succeeded in escaping her observation. If Joseph folded a napkin carelessly, Joseph not only heard of it, but suffered the indignity of seeing his work performed for him to perfection by the housekeeper's dexterous hands.

On the second day of the New Year, she was at her post as usual, and Joseph stood convicted of being wasteful in the matter of wine.

He had put one bottle of Ohligsberger on the table, at the place occupied by Madame Fontaine. The wine had already been used at the dinner and the supper of the previous day. At least two-thirds of it had been drunk.

Joseph set down a second bottle on the opposite side of the table, and produced his corkscrew. Madame Fontaine took it out of his hand.

"Why do you open that bottle, before you are sure it will be wanted?" She asked sharply. "You know that Mr. Keller and his son prefer beer."

"There is so little left in the other bottle," Joseph pleaded; "not a full tumbler altogether."

"It may be enough, little as it is, for Mrs. Wagner and for me." With that reply she pointed to the door. Joseph retired, leaving her alone at the table, until the dinner was ready to be brought into the room.

In five minutes more, the family a.s.sembled at their meal.

Joseph performed his customary duties sulkily, resenting the housekeeper's reproof. When the time came for filling the gla.s.ses, he had the satisfaction of hearing Madame Fontaine herself give him orders to draw the cork of a new bottle, after all.

Mrs. Wagner turned to Jack, standing behind her chair as usual, and asked for some wine. Madame Fontaine instantly took up the nearly empty bottle by her side, and, half-filling a gla.s.s, handed it with grave politeness across the table. "If you have no objection," she said, "we will finish one bottle, before we open another."

Mrs. Wagner drank her small portion of wine at a draught. "It doesn't seem to keep well, after it has once been opened," she remarked, as she set down her gla.s.s. "The wine has quite lost the good flavor it had yesterday."

"It ought to keep well," said Mr. Keller, speaking from his place at the top of the table. "It's old wine, and good wine. Let me taste what is left."

Joseph advanced to carry the remains of the wine to his master. But Madame Fontaine was beforehand with him. "Open the other bottle directly," she said--and rose so hurriedly to take the wine herself to Mr. Keller, that she caught her foot in her dress. In saving herself from falling, she lost her hold of the bottle. It broke in two pieces, and the little wine left in it ran out on the floor.

"Pray forgive me," she said, smiling faintly. "It is the first thing I have broken since I have been in the house."

The wine from the new bottle was offered to Mrs. Wagner. She declined to take any: and she left her dinner unfinished on her plate.

"My appet.i.te is very easily spoilt," she said. "I dare say there might have been something I didn't notice in the gla.s.s--or perhaps my taste may be out of order."

"Very likely," said Mr. Keller. "You didn't find anything wrong with the wine yesterday. And there is certainly nothing to complain of in the new bottle," he added, after tasting it. "Let us have your opinion, Madame Fontaine."

He filled the housekeeper's gla.s.s. "I am a poor judge of wine," she remarked humbly. "It seems to me to be delicious."

She put her gla.s.s down, and noticed that Jack's eyes were fixed on her, with a solemn and scrutinizing attention. "Do you see anything remarkable in me?" she asked lightly.

"I was thinking," Jack answered.

"Thinking of what?"

"This is the first time I ever saw you in danger of tumbling down. It used to be a remark of mine, at Wurzburg, that you were as sure-footed as a cat. That's all."

"Don't you know that there are exceptions to all rules?" said Madame Fontaine, as amiably as ever. "I notice an exception in You," she continued, suddenly changing the subject. "What has become of your leather bag? May I ask if you have taken away his keys, Mrs. Wagner?"