Coffee had just been served in Frau Wollnow's pleasant little balcony room in the second story. The gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a cigar in the office, but the ladies were still sitting at the table, from which the pretty young servant-girl was removing the dishes. The three children, who could not become accustomed to the altered arrangements of the household--coffee was generally served in the sitting-room below--romped noisily around, to Frau Wollnow's great amus.e.m.e.nt, while Alma Sellien smoothed a frown of displeasure from her white forehead with her soft dainty hand.

"Couldn't you send the children away now?"

"The children!" said Frau Wollnow, casting an astonished glance from her round brown eyes at her brown-eyed darlings.

"I'm always a little nervous in the morning; and to-day must be doubly cautious, as I have a country excursion in prospect."

"Pardon me, dear Alma; I forgot you were not accustomed to the noise. It is not always so bad; but since Stine left me day before yesterday--dear me, I can't blame her; the good old thing wants to get married, and to a young man who might almost be her son, so she certainly has no time to lose. She has gone back to her parents. The wedding will take place in a fortnight. It was hard enough for her to leave the children--"

"You were going to send the children away, dear!"

The children were sent away. Alma Sellien leaned back in the corner of the sofa exhausted, and said, closing her soft blue eyes as it half asleep: "I am sure this will be another disappointment."

"What, dear Alma?" asked Frau Wollnow, whose thoughts were still with her children.

"My husband is so terribly enthusiastic about him; he's always enthusiastic about men I afterwards think horrible."

"You will be mistaken this time," cried Frau Wollnow, who, engrossed in this interesting subject, even failed to hear her youngest child crying upon the stairs; "your husband has said too little rather than too much. He is not only a handsome man--which, for my part, I consider of very little consequence--tall, and of an extremely elegant, graceful bearing, which harmonizes most admirably with the gentle, yet resolute expression of his features, the mild, yet steady gaze of his large deep-blue eyes, and even the soft, but sonorous tone of his voice."

"You are surely turning poetess," said Alma.

Ottilie Wollnow blushed to the roots of the curly bluish-black hair on her temples.

"I don't deny that I am very, very--"

"Much in love with him," said Alma, completing the sentence.

"Why yes, if you choose to say so; that is, as I love everything good and beautiful."

"An excellent theory, which I profess myself, only unfortunately in practice we must always be withheld by the opposition of our husbands.

Yours did not seem to be quite so much delighted with your protege."

"My good Emil!" said Frau Wollnow, "we don't agree in a great many things, and, dear me, it is certainly no wonder; he has been obliged to work so hard all his life, that it has made him a little grave and pedantic; but he is a thoroughly good man, and in this case you are entirely mistaken; at heart he is even more interested in Gotthold than I, or, if that is saying too much, quite as much so."

"It did not seem so."

"But it was only seeming. He is afraid of compromising his dignity if he talks as he really feels. I have found that all people who have had a sorrowful youth are so. Even the heart, so to speak, needs to have had its dancing lessons, and when it has had none, when it has always been compelled to beat under the pressure of straitened, gloomy surroundings, as in my poor Emil's case, people never overcome it all their lives. But what I was going to say is, that this time there is a special reason for it. My good Emil certainly never told even me--dear, kind man, as if I would have taken it amiss--that thirty or thirty-five years ago he was once very deeply in love with Gotthold's mother, when they lived in the same house in Stettin--it is a long and very romantic story."

"Oh! oh!" said Alma, "who would ever have given your husband credit for that?"

"Why," cried Ottilie, "you are entirely mistaken in Emil; his nature has a freshness, a power, a youthful fire--"

"How happy you are!" said Alma with a faint sigh.

"I hope you are no less so; but I wanted to explain why Emil always becomes so quiet when the conversation turns upon Gotthold. That is the reason of it, and then he has taken it into his head that this visit to the Brandows must turn out unlucky for him--Gotthold. You know Gotthold used to be in love with Cecilia; nay, between ourselves, I am sure he loves her still. But now, tell me yourself: can you see any great misfortune in that?"

"Not at all; I only think it rather improbable; you know I have never been able to share your enthusiasm about Cecilia, and don't see why all the men are to be in love with her. Her husband evidently isn't; at least I know a lady to whom he devotes himself whenever he meets her, in a way that proves his heart is not very strongly engaged in any other quarter."

"If he has one. Forgive me, dear Alma, you are a prudent woman, and I am sure you love your husband; but Brandow is really an extremely dangerous man. Possessed of the most attractive manners, when he chooses to adopt them; always lively and humorous, even witty, yet sensible when the occasion requires him to be so; and moreover bold, fearless, an acknowledged master of all chivalrous arts--and such things always impose upon us women--in a word, a dangerous man. Good Heavens, would it have been possible, under any other circ.u.mstances, to understand how the aristocratic, poetic Cecilia could have fallen in love with him! But what does all this avail without true love, and I do not believe Carl Brandow is capable of the feeling. Now let a man such as I have described Gotthold to be, enter the home of such a couple,--a man, moreover, who has scarcely conquered a boyish love for the wife,--indeed, if one reflects upon it, one can hardly blame my husband: such pa.s.sionate natures, and in the loneliness of country life,--it really seems as if scales had fallen from my eyes. And Gotthold has not written a word all this week! Still waters run deep, but may not deep waters perhaps be still? And I have actually been the cause of it by my unlucky mania for pictures!"

"I think I can set your mind at rest, so far as that goes," said Alma.

"I have found that men always have some reason for doing what they wish; if it isn't one thing, it's another. And then this evening, or to-morrow morning at latest, if we spend the night at Dollan, I can bring you the very latest and most exact news about all these interesting complications. I only fear they will prove less interesting than you expect."

"Lucky Alma!" said Ottilie sighing; "how much I should like to go with you. But my husband would never allow it."

"'Allow' is a word a husband should never be permitted to use to his wife," said Alma, as she slipped her wedding-ring up and down her slender finger.

The conversation between the two ladies was interrupted by a.s.sessor Sellien, who hastily entered the room.

"Why," said his wife, "have you come back already? Is the carriage here? I haven't put on my travelling-dress yet."

"The carriage is not here," said the a.s.sessor as he seated himself between the two ladies, and raised his wife's hand, which hung loosely over the back of the sofa, to his lips; "I only came to ask whether you would not prefer to stay here."

"Stay here!" said Alma, hastily starting from her lounging att.i.tude in the sofa corner. "What has got into your head, Hugo?"

"You have one of your headaches, dear child, and a very bad one; I noticed it some time ago."

"You are entirely mistaken, dear Hugo; I feel unusually well this morning."

"And this terrible weather," said the a.s.sessor, looking thoughtfully through the open door that led to the balcony; "there, it is raining again; I don't understand how ladies can expose themselves so."

He rose and shut the door.

"Brandow will send a close carriage in any case," said Alma.

"So much the worse," cried the a.s.sessor. "You could not endure an hour in a close carriage, poor child. And then those terrible roads--I know them! To cross Dollan moor after it has rained all night--it's actually dangerous."

"I will not expose you to the danger all alone," said Alma smiling.

"That is very different, dear child. Men must follow wherever duty calls."

"And the prospect of a good dinner--"

"In a word, dear Alma, you would do me a favor if you would stay here."

"I have not the least inclination to do you this favor, dear Hugo, and now what else is there, if I may ask?"

The a.s.sessor had risen and walked up and down the room.

"Well, then," he said pausing, "you know how unwilling I am to deny you anything; but this time I really cannot allow you to go."

Alma looked at her husband in astonishment; Ottilie, who could no longer control herself, burst into a merry laugh, exclaiming:

"'Allow' is a word a husband should never be permitted to use to his wife."

"Perhaps the word is not exactly suitable," said the a.s.sessor; "but it does not alter the fact. And the fact is, that your husband has just given me certain information, which makes Alma's accompanying me this time appear not only undesirable, but even impossible. And your husband, my dear lady, is entirely of my opinion."

"But Emil's solicitude carries him entirely too far," cried Frau Wollnow angrily; "poor Cecilia has not deserved this. That is attacking a woman's reputation, not only unnecessarily, but without the slightest reason. If people are so excessively strict, they will be obliged to give up all society."