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A Noble Name; or, Dönninghausen
A Noble Name; or, Dönninghausen
CHAPTER I
"ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE."
At the window of a luxuriously-furnished dressing-room a young girl was seated sewing, murmuring verses the while to herself with an absorbed air. All around her lay various stuffs, ribbons, and laces, while standing upon a footstool at a toilet-table immediately behind her a strikingly beautiful child, five or six years old, was twisting gay ribbons about her head and arms, finally throwing around her shoulders a blue satin sash and looking at herself in the glass with immense satisfaction.
"Lisbeth, what are you doing?" a sharp voice suddenly asked, and from between the curtains of the portière of the door of the adjoining sleeping-room came a fair, pretty woman in an evident ill humour.
"Mamma!" the child exclaimed, and jumping hastily down from the footstool, she entangled herself in her draperies and fell. Her mother hurried towards her with a scream, but the young girl had already flown to the little one's assistance.
"I haven't hurt myself," the child immediately declared, looking up beseechingly at her mother, who, nevertheless, seized her impatiently by the arm and tore off the sash from her shoulders. "All this beautiful ribbon crushed and spoiled!" she said, crossly. "If you can take no better care of Lisbeth, my dear Johanna, the child must stay with Lina. Go, go to the nursery, and don't disturb me again to-day," she added, turning to the little girl; and then, sitting down before the dressing-table, she began to arrange her abundant fair hair.
Lisbeth went to Johanna and seized her hand. "Don't be vexed with Lisbeth, mamma," the young girl entreated. "She is not to blame. I was not attending to her; I was going over my part."
"If you do not know it perfectly by this time you had better give it up," the other said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "Make up your mind to do so, and I will give it to Fräulein Dornbach. She can easily learn those few words before to-morrow evening."
"Oh, no! let me try," the young girl exclaimed. "I have just said them without stumbling. And my dress is nearly finished. I wanted to ask you – "
"Well?" the other asked, when Johanna hesitated.
"To let me go to the theatre to-night," she replied, without looking up.
"What! again? You went only a couple of days ago."