She would call it "getting well" still, even though the first sight of his face this morning had struck her with a chill of apprehension. Yes, there was a change here too, even after this one week of absence. Of course he was getting cured, of course the tutelary god of the valley was not going to send him home as he came – the great Hercules had surely too much regard for his own reputation to allow of such a thing, but other people had got cured faster. Adalbert had been outstripped by many whose case had at first sight appeared more desperate.
"He had his forty-eighth bath to-day," said Gretchen, opening another page of her account-book; "and I had calculated that after four dozen baths he would leave his chair, and after six dozen be able, to walk up the highest mountain in the country."
"So he will, my dear," burst in Belita, speaking with all the more rattling cheerfulness that she felt her friend's fears to be well-founded – "so he will, if you only follow my advice. Do you know what would be better for him than a hundred sulphur baths? Why, to see his daughter's fortune made, of course!"
"I have told you that I mean to make it in my own way, Belita; I will not be dictated to."
"Oho, my pretty fortune-hunter!" cried the Contessa, "we are very fastidious in our choice, it seems; but how do you know that there is any choice remaining?"
"I don't understand," said Gretchen, staring at her friend.
"No; and you don't understand either what has kept me languishing on in this rocky fastness, and wasting the sweetness of Parisian toilettes upon the more than desert air, when I might have been wearing my homard écrasé at Ostende, or my éclipse de lune bonnet at Baden-Baden. It is all for your sake, ungrateful Margherita!"
"I never asked you to stay," said Gretchen, completely mystified."
"But you might thank one for it. Misericordia! What trouble I have had! Keeping my eyes open from morning to night, and not even leaving myself time enough to write the most pressing letters to my couturière."
"And what have you seen while you kept your eyes open?" with an uneasy curiosity.
"Plenty, my dear, – too much. Do you remember my telling you that Baron Tolnay was not caught yet?"
"Yes, I remember."
"Well, it is high time you were back. If this had gone on for another week, I should have been driven by the considerations of friendship to flirt with Baron Tolnay myself, in order to keep him away from that – No!" broke off the Contessa abruptly, "you shall find it out without me. Besides, my time is up, I have an appointment at home – some Wallachian embroidery, which Providence has cast in my path, and which forms a new and distinct interest in life. Do you dine at the restaurant to-day?"
"Yes," said Gretchen, further mystified.
"Well, keep your eyes open, that is all: there is a rival in the camp."
Belita walked to the door. "You have time to arm for battle," she observed, turning once more. "Baron Tolnay is at Pesth now, seeing after some international congress, I believe; and, perhaps, also buying unbreakable glass for the Cursalon." And with this parting shot, the Contessa took her
