During this conversation Johann Leopold had approached Johanna at her coffee-table.

"How do you like your new cousin?" he asked; "but I need hardly ask, for you seem to have become excellent friends with him since last evening."

"Not quite since last evening," Johanna replied, blushing slightly. "He came to see me just after my father's death, and was so kind----"

"I can easily imagine it," Johann Leopold interrupted her. "He knows how to strike the right chord everywhere, modern Piper of Hamelin that he is. Have a care of him."

She looked up at him inquiringly, but the telltale blush would return; involuntarily she turned away to conceal it, and suddenly, she did not know why, she remembered the lovers whom she had promised to befriend.

"I have a favour to ask of you," she said, gravely. "It concerns Red Jakob."

"What is it?" he asked, taking a chair by her side; and, encouraged by his sympathy, she told him of the scene in the forest lodge and of poor Christine's sorrows. Johann Leopold readily promised his help to the girl, and together they discussed what should be done.

"Let me beg you, Magelone, to look towards the coffee-table," said Hildegard, after she had watched the pair for a while. "They have been engaged in that interesting conversation for a quarter of an hour. Are you not jealous?"

Magelone laughed. "Jealous of Johanna? Oh, no," she declared, confidently.

"Don't be so sure, my dear child," was Hildegard's sneering reply. "In spite of your irresistible charms, you have never succeeded since I have been here in making Johann Leopold talk as he is now talking to Johanna."

"Yes, he actually seems transformed," said Hedwig. "He certainly is talking and listening now, while beside you he sits like a wooden doll."

"Of course, ''tis love, 'tis love that makes men mute,'" Magelone said, with a smile; but her eyes gleamed, and a sensation of mistrust of Johanna stirred in her heart,--faint and fleeting, it is true, but it was the beginning, nevertheless, of a change in the relations between the cousins.

The next morning Johann Leopold rode to the forest lodge. When he returned, meeting Johanna in the corridor, he told her that the rough fellow had wept bitterly when told of the death of his child, and had entreated that he might see Christine.

"It would be best for you to go up to the lodge with her to-morrow morning early," he added; "it would lighten the weary way for her, and I will be there to take her to the invalid."

"I will certainly have her there," Johanna replied, "punctually at eleven o'clock. Oh, Johann Leopold, how kind you are!"

They had just reached the drawing-room door. Magelone, gliding noiselessly down-stairs, heard Johanna's last words.

"What has he been doing that is so kind?" she asked. "Tell me, that I may admire it too."

Johanna was embarra.s.sed. Her cousin came to her a.s.sistance. "Never mind, my dear Magelone," he said, in his usual cold, deliberate tone. "You would consider it the mere dilettantism of philanthropy, upon which you but lately expended your ridicule."

As he spoke he opened the drawing-room door. Magelone pa.s.sed him with an angry blush. How silly to take her words so seriously! Of course Johanna never said such things. The girl was growing positively disagreeable.

According to agreement, Johanna presented herself with her protegee at the forester's the next morning. Christine could not yet believe that she should see Red Jakob. "His sister will certainly prevent it," she kept saying.

But Johann Leopold's authority had successfully opposed the forester's wife. As soon as she saw Johanna and Christine approaching she sullenly withdrew, and contented herself with watching them through the c.h.i.n.k of the door.

She did not see much. Johann Leopold went to meet the visitors. "Come, my child, Jakob is expecting you," he said, with a gentle kindness that aggravated Frau Kruger's ill humour. He had never spoken so to either her husband or herself. "Do not be afraid," he went on; "no one shall molest you. If any should try to do so, let me know." And he opened the door of the sick-room.

"Christine, have you come at last?" Jakob's voice called from the bed.

With a cry the girl rushed to him, and Johann Leopold closed the door upon them. "Come, Johanna, we have nothing further to do here," he said, and together they left the house.

When the forester's wife looked from the window, they were walking down the forest-path. She smiled scornfully. "No one could persuade me," she thought, "that those two came up here for the sake of Jakob and Christine; but I'll see to it, they may depend upon it. If I could only hear what they are talking about! She looks up at him as if he were the Herr Pastor in the pulpit."

Their talk was strange enough,--it was rather a monologue of Johann Leopold's to which Johanna listened.

"Happy unfortunates!" he began, looking sadly abroad into s.p.a.ce. "Even yesterday, when Jakob was weeping for his boy and crying out after Christine, I envied him. How such emotion must enlarge and strengthen the soul! Happiness or misery is of no moment, but an absorbing pa.s.sion, that possesses and rules the entire man----Yet who experiences such?

Only some half-savage like my poor Jakob. We superior beings, as we are called, with our boasted culture, pay for our position with doubt, hesitation, half-heartedness."

Johanna listened to him with pained surprise. How could he thus forget or ignore his own past, his love for his dead betrothed, which Aunt Thekla maintained he still cherished in his heart? She could not venture to remind him of it, however, and she said, after a pause, "I think you are mistaken; love is not influenced by rank or culture. Remember my mother."

He did not seem to hear her, but went on: "And naturally we are drawn on from year to year by half-desires, half-resolves; our goal seems to us not worthy of exertion to attain it. And if some caprice places what we desire within our reach, we scarcely know whether to grasp it and hold it fast, for to grasp it gives trouble, and to hold it fast calls for exertion."

Was he speaking with reference to himself? Was Magelone what he desired?

Johanna would have liked to help him to unburden his mind, but any mention of Magelone seemed to her to be indiscreet, so she merely remarked, "I cannot imagine any one's being too indolent to grasp an offered happiness."

"Happiness!" he repeated, with a melancholy smile. "Happiness! Who believes in it? You do not know how much strength is required for belief; much more than for pa.s.sionate desire. Therefore the man who rushes blindly, head first, into the maddest, unworthiest pa.s.sion, regardless of the harm that may result from it, seems to me not only more enviable, but more estimable even, than the prudent doubter, who is cold to-day and warm to-morrow, unable either to grasp or to relinquish. There stands the lovely being before you; your heart throbs at the sight of her; you long to call her your own, to belong to her, to lose yourself in her. But in the midst of your intoxication you know that she is but sounding bra.s.s and a tinkling cymbal, that she does not understand you, or wish to understand you, and that if your longing were fulfilled your desire would become satiety and disgust. You tell yourself that you never would be able to excuse to yourself the illusion of the past, and there are moments in which you even despise your desire."

He drew a long breath, paused, and stroked back the hair from his pale forehead. "Do I startle you?" he then said, in a quiet tone. "Forgive me, and forget what I have said. When you have known me longer you will understand that I am apt to be lost in illusions, and that I readily take phantoms for creatures of flesh and blood."

The Freiherr was able to leave his wheeled chair on this same day; he declared that nothing any longer stood in the way of the contemplated New Year's dinner, and preparations were begun for it. Johanna and Otto wrote the invitations; Aunt Thekla pa.s.sed cellar and pantries in review, and had conferences with the housekeeper; old Christian polished up the 'ancestral plate,' as Hildegard reverently called it, and from s.p.a.cious cupboards were produced treasures of antique gla.s.s and porcelain.

Magelone was more whimsical than usual, beginning one thing after another only to lay it aside, and ridiculing the 'ceremonial state' in progress, but with a forced gayety that troubled Johanna. Hildegard strutted like a peac.o.c.k in hopes of outshining in a new velvet gown all the ladies of the surrounding county, while Hedwig ascribed still more dazzling properties to her old Venetian lace. The Freiherr antic.i.p.ated the New Year's dinner with the satisfaction with which an architect contemplates the laying of the corner-stone of a structure that has been long planned. Even the Herr Pastor was busy with the dinner. He was composing a toast to be given at it in honour of the betrothal.

What Johann Leopold's sensations were upon this occasion it would be difficult to say. By no hint did he betray his knowledge of the significance of the festival. His conduct towards Magelone was as cool and deliberate as ever. As long as the Freiherr remained amid the family circle, Johann Leopold was there also. So soon as the old gentleman withdrew, he also vanished. Johanna, in whom the impression of his talk in the forest was still vivid, watched him narrowly, but she looked in vain for any echo of that hour, and began to believe that not only Johann Leopold but also she herself had seen phantoms.

Thus the day before the first of the new year arrived. The clear Christmas weather had given place to thick gray clouds that, lashed by the winds, sailed above the mountains. The Freiherr, too, whose mood had been more cheerful since the gout had left him, looked as gloomy within-doors as did the skies without. "I do not know what to think of Waldemar," he said, as he paced the room to and fro, smoking his morning pipe. "It is a little too much to have no word from him since the telegram on Christmas-eve."

"Since that announced his arrival here to-day, he probably thought nothing further necessary," said Aunt Thekla.

"Indeed! And do you agree with him?" the Freiherr said, turning upon her. "Then see what this new-fangled want of consideration comes to.

What is to be done about sending for him? I cannot have the carriage go to every train."

"Waldemar always comes by the express-train, which is due at five o'clock in Thalrode," said Hildegard, who sat opposite Aunt Thekla engaged on some embroidery.

"Nonsense! He comes sometimes at noon, and sometimes at eight in the evening," the Freiherr rejoined. "But that's of no consequence. Let him come when he chooses, he must send word when he will be here, and if he does not he will not be sent for. _Basta!_"

His tone was such as to admit of no reply. All were silent, while the old Herr continued to pace to and fro, puffing out thick clouds of smoke. Magelone alone ventured, when he was at the other end of the room, to whisper to Aunt Thekla, "A great fuss about nothing! You will see we shall have a letter or a telegram from Waldemar saying he cannot come. I wouldn't come either, if I could amuse myself in Vienna as he can."

But the hours pa.s.sed, and neither letter nor telegram made its appearance. The early twilight came on, made still more dim by the snow-storm which had begun at noon, and which was increasing in violence. The wind howled and shrieked around the castle.

A bright fire was burning in the drawing-room, where stood the Christmas-tree, which was, according to custom, to be relighted, then thoroughly stripped, chopped up, and burned on New Year's eve. Magelone and Johanna were busy replacing upon it candles which had burned down.

Aunt Thekla and Hildegard sat beside the fire; Hedwig stood at the window, looking out into the driving snow. "If our husbands were only back again!" she said. "Inconceivable to wish to ride out in such a storm."

"It looks worse than it is," said Johanna. "I came back only half an hour ago from the village; it was glorious to breast the wind."

"A strange predilection!" Hildegard exclaimed. "But you did not go alone?"

Before Johanna could reply, the door was noisily opened, and the Freiherr entered. It was so unusual for him to join the family at this hour that Aunt Thekla, startled, arose and went towards him.

"Do not disturb yourself!" he said, beginning to pace the room to and fro. "Detestable weather!" he exclaimed, as a blast of wind shook the windows. "I ought to have sent the carriage. There's no knowing whether or not Waldemar can get a conveyance in Thalrode now; it is too late."

"The carriage is at Thalrode, grandpapa," said Johanna. "Johann Leopold drove over."

"Without my knowledge?" cried the Freiherr, standing still in the middle of the room. His eyes gleamed in the firelight.