Lizzie's "wild team," as they entitled themselves with pride, were all there--Otzen, Krassow, Zesslingen, and Neuheim, and the two soldier sons of the house, of course. It had all been in vain, then, the sacrifice of his manliness, the plunge into a maze of lies and deceit. She had reopened the undignified flirtation with these silly boys without troubling herself about his opinion. He might have spared himself everything; all the long anguish, beginning on the Isle of Friendship that September morning, and culminating on the altar steps the other day. A red haze dimmed his sight, the invariable signal of one of his most furious outbursts. "Pull yourself together," an inward voice commanded. He realised that in any passage of arms with these youths he must be worsted, as she apparently was oblivious of any harm being done. So he shook hands with them and then said very firmly-- "You know, Felicitas, how careful Ulrich is of your health. I cannot stand by and see you catch your death. Take my arm." She dared not refuse point-blank, for she dreaded a serious remonstrance on his part. She got up, and laying her hand on the arm of the younger Stolt, she said-- "He who is my cavalier mustn't try to be my master, too, dear Leo. Come, Fritz, and let us dance." She curtsied, and with her feet already beating time to the music of the waltz, she rustled past him. "Never mind, Sellenthin," said young Zesslingen, naïvely, "she treats us worse than that, even." To the rage of mothers and the chagrin of sisters, the troop of youths now took up their post at the door of the salon, awaiting the moment when their charmer should stop to rest, and they be able to rush to her again. As Leo was making his way back to the hall, he encountered Kurt Brenckenberg, mincing and smug, with fresh wine-stains on the silk lappets of his dress-coat. He whistled indifferently to conceal an uneasy conscience, and made a sharp detour to avoid Leo. The latter remembered the song of "The Smiling Stars," and he beckoned Elly to come and speak to him for a moment. She flew from her partner's arms to his, half wild with triumph in her conquests. "Look here," he said, "it is my wish that you don't have anything more to do with the Candidate Brenckenberg." She looked blank at first, as if the name had entirely escaped her memory. "Candidate! Candidate! Oh, you mean ... _him_. I have cut him long ago. Dear Leo, you may make your mind quite easy on that score, I assure you." And with one of those expressions of boundless and unutterable contempt which very young and ingenuous ladies always know how to command, she glanced over her shoulder at the object of her first love, who, in his mortification, was biting the fingers of his cleaned white kid gloves.