ness about her head, and fastened on one side by a fresh,
dark-red rose. The dead white of her cheeks looked more blooming than
usual in the warm light of the candles, and her keen, piercing eyes and
white teeth vied with one another in brilliancy.

"I am so glad you have kept your word," she exclaimed to the young men,
giving one of her soft little hands to each of them. "I hope, too, your
talented friend and master will also find his way here; and you shall
not regret having come. To be sure, I told you beforehand you must be
contented with what your ears would let you enjoy. Still, your eyes
sha'n't go away quite unsatisfied. Come, I will show you something
beautiful."

She took Felix's arm, and, talking rapidly all the time, led him to the
other end of the _salon_. In a corner, on a semicircular sofa, sat
several mothers and duennas, and in the chairs on either side perhaps a
half dozen young girls, all belonging to the stage or the music-school,
engaged in earnest conversation with some young musicians about the
latest opera and the last concert. A little to one side of them a group
of elderly gentlemen could be seen gathered about a slight, youthful
figure, who sat near a little flower-stand, and who appeared to be
listening in rather an absent way to a white-haired little man, who was
giving a long disquisition on Bach's Passion-Music. Her back was turned
toward the side from which the countess approached with Felix. Now,
upon hearing the hostess's voice, she turned with much dignity.

"Allow me, _ma toute belle_, to introduce to you Baron von Weiblingen
and Herr Rosenbusch," said the countess. "The gentlemen are artists,
dear Irene; Herr Rosenbusch is a painter and musician.--You have
brought your flute, haven't you?"

The painter exhausted himself in assurances of his inability to produce
his sounds of Nature, as he called them, for any ears but his own; but
the countess had already turned to Felix again.

"Did I say too much?" she whispered, loud enough for the Fraeulein to
hear her. "Isn't she charming? But your silence says enough. Happy
youth! For a woman's ears there is no sweeter music than such silence,
when she herself is the cause of it. I leave you to your enchantment;
_bonne chance!_"

She tapped his arm lightly with her black fan, nodded slyly to the
beautiful girl, and disappeared once more in the crowd about the piano.

The old gentleman, a musical amateur of the old school whom the
counte