"If your dancing is as perfect as your German
exercises were," said she, laughing, as they
swung out upon the floor, "then I promise myself
a good deal of pleasure from our meeting."
"Never fear," answered he, quickly reversing
his step, and whirling with many a capricious
turn away among the thronging couples.
When Ralph drove home in his carriage
toward morning he briefly summed up his
impressions of Bertha in the following adjectives:
intelligent, delightfully unsophisticated, a little
bit verdant, but devilish pretty.
Some weeks later Colonel Grim received an
appointment at the fortress of Aggershuus, and
immediately took up his residence in the capital.
He saw that his son cut a fine figure in the
highest circles of society, and expressed his
gratification in the most emphatic terms. If he
had known, however, that Ralph was in the
habit of visiting, with alarming regularity, at
the house of a plebeian merchant in a somewhat
obscure street, he would, no doubt, have been
more chary of his praise. But the Colonel
suspected nothing, and it was well for the peace of
the family that he did not. It may have been
cowardice in Ralph that he never mentioned
Bertha's name to his family or to his aristocratic
acquaintances; for, to be candid, he himself felt
ashamed of the power she exerted over him, and
by turns pitied and ridiculed himself for pursuing
so inglorious a conquest. Nevertheless
it wounded his egotism that she never showed
any surprise at seeing him, that she received
him with a certain frank unceremoniousness,
which, however, was very becoming to her;
that she invariably went on with her work heedless
of his presence, and in everything treated
him as if she had been his equal.
Pages:
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122