Felix Lanzberg's Expiation by Ossip Schubin

"A Modern Donna Elvira! " This sarcastic nickname originated at the time when the charming Privy Councellor Dey, whose wife we are acquainted with, was still alive. Count Dey was a red-haired gnome, who was continually mistaken for his own tutor which, as the facetious Pistasch maintained with conviction to this day, was very annoying to the tutor. Besides, Count Dey was eighteen years older than his wife, who, if not beautiful, was still uncommonly attractive, and still the poor woman embittered her young life with the most painful jealousy, followed her husband about distrustfully, accompanied him on the briefest visits of inspection to his estates, shivering and heroic, shared with him the cold inconveniences of his grouse hunt in the Tyrol. The world maliciously delighted in the industry with which she defended her rights, and also in the fact that, in spite of her astonishing and extensive precautions, she was continually deceived by her red-haired spouse.

Mimi Dey now served as a warning example for Elsa. She, Elsa, had not the slightest wish to undertake the role of the "modern Donna Elvira," and expose herself to universal mockery. Therefore she concealed her jealousy from Erwin with Spartan self-control, and smiled with the most charming loftiness, while the poisonous mistrust tore her bosom as pitilessly as the young fox tore the brave little Lacedaemonian.