replied; "I myself
would give a great deal to have it." "Then may I venture to offer it to
you?" the Italian said.

She blushed, but did not refuse it, but the same evening she rushed into
her lover's room in a state of the greatest excitement. "I am beside
myself," she stammered; "I have been most deeply insulted." "By whom?"
the Count asked, excitedly. "By your friend, who has dared to send me
some jewelry to-day. I suppose he looks upon me as a lost woman; perhaps
I am already looked upon as belonging to the _demi-monde_, and this I owe
to you, to you alone, and to my mad love for you, to which I have
sacrificed my honor and everything. Everything!" She threw herself down
and sobbed, and would not be pacified until the Count gave her his word
of honor that he would set aside every consideration for his friend, and
obtain satisfaction for her at any price. He met the Italian the same
evening at a card party and questioned him.

"I did not, in the first place, send the lady the jewelry, but I gave it
to her myself, not, however, until she had asked me to do so." "That is a
shameful lie!" the Count shouted, furiously. Unfortunately, there were
others present, and his friend took the matter seriously, so the next
morning he sent his seconds to the Count.

Some of their real friends tried to settle the matter in another way, but
his bad angel, his mistress, who required thirty thousand florins, drove
the Count to his death. He was found in the Prater, with his friend's
bullet in his chest. A letter in his pocket spoke of suicide, but the
police did not doubt for a moment that a duel had taken place. Suspicion
soon fell on the Italian, but when they went to arrest him, he had
already made his escape.

The husband of the beautiful, problematical woman, called on the
broken-hearted father of the man who had been killed in the duel, and who
had hastened to Vienna on receipt of a telegraphic message, a few hours
after his arrival, and demanded the money. "My wife was your son's most
intimate friend," he stammered, in embarrassment, in order to justify his
action as well as he could. "Oh! I know that," the old Count replied,
"and female friends of that kind want to be paid immediately, and in
full. Here are the thirty thousand florins."

And our _Goldkind_? She paid her debts, and then withdrew from the scene
for a while. She had been compromised, certainly, but then, she had risen
in value in the eyes of those numerous me