The young girl no longer wore the gray Cinderella gown: the Countess had taken care that her god-child should be suitably attired on this occasion; but Gerlinda was evidently oppressed by her unwonted splendour. Perhaps, too, she felt how unsuited she was to this brilliant circle, and this made her still more shy. She stood before Hertha, timid and embarrassed, scarcely daring to raise her eyes. "Only you must not stand in that ridiculously prim attitude," said Hertha. "On that lonely Ebersburg you absolutely forget how to move about among people. You see no one there but your father, and perhaps the peasants of the village where you attend mass." Gerlinda was silent and hung her head. No one? She thought of the guest who had arrived in the storm and rain and had departed in the sunshine; but she had never mentioned him hitherto, although his coming had been a great event in her lonely life. An involuntary shyness closed her lips; least of all could she have spoken of it here and now. The memory of the sunny morning dream in the ruinous old castle was not for the ear of the young lady who could so coolly tutor and criticise her little friend. Hertha turned away, and as she did so she accidentally brushed from her dressing-table her bouquet, without noticing its fall. Gerlinda picked it up. "Thanks," said Hertha, indifferently, as she took the flowers. They seemed to have been but loosely put together, for one of the roses had become detached from its sister buds and lay directly at the feet of the young Countess, who looked down at it with a rather strange expression. Perhaps she was thinking of that other evening when just such a fragrant half-opened bud had fallen from her hand, only to perish beneath the tread of an iron heel. "Let it alone," she said, as Gerlinda was about to stoop again. "What does a single rose matter? I have enough here." "But it is your lover's gift," said the young girl. "I am going to carry these this evening, and Raoul cannot ask anything more. If the formal congratulations were only over! It is so deadly tiresome to listen to the same thing from everybody, and to have to respond to all those conventional phrases. I am not at all in the mood for it to-night." The words sounded impatient, and there was nervous impatience in the way in which she began to pace the room to and fro. Gerlinda's eyes, opening wide with amazement, followed the proud, queenly figure in the trailing satin robe; she could not understand how a girl at her betrothal should not be in the mood to receive congratulations, and she asked, naïvely, "Do you not like Count Raoul?"