The sleighing-party did not return to the second breakfast. The dinner-hour first assembled the various members of the family.

"Was grandpapa angry?" Magelone whispered to Johanna. Just then the Freiherr was wheeled into the room, and his frowning brow answered her question only too clearly.

Hildegard was not to be intimidated.

"Do not be angry, dear grandpapa," she said, with an air of arrogant ease quite her own. "It was my fault that we stayed so long; I had not seen the Klausenburgs for an age, and they begged us so to stay that it was impossible to say no."

"But you found it quite possible to keep us waiting here," the Freiherr rejoined. "Another time please to remember that such want of consideration has never been the rule of my household, and never shall be. Be seated!"

"I told you so," Karl Wildenhayn whispered to his wife as she passed him.

"You are all cowards!" she rejoined, and then seated herself with head erect and knitted brows on the left of the Freiherr, for whom she seemed no longer to have any existence.

The meal was very monosyllabic. Now and then Otto would whisper something to Johanna, and she would listen with a smile. Then Johann Leopold, who looked paler and more weary than usual, would look up from his plate, gaze at her, and then sink again into his usual apathy, from which Magelone to-day did not try to rouse him.

When they went to the drawing-room she left Johann Leopold, and, approaching Otto, said, "Pray suggest some folly to me,—I am dying of ennui."

he began to sing in an undertone, and his eyes expressed the passion which was suppressed in his half-teasing voice. Magelone shrugged her shoulders.

"Nonsense! even the poet himself called that tragedy," she replied. "I want something merry to do. But you are afflicted with the DÖnninghausen stupidity."

"How unjust!" cried Otto. "Was it not a merry thing to whisk you away from Klausenburg—right from under Johann Leopold's long nose—into the sleigh with me, and drive off with you?"

Magelone laughed. Otto continued passionately: "I should have liked to carry you off to the end of the world. The thought of seeing you in Johann Leopold's arms makes me frantic. Why do you look at me so disdainfully, and what does that smile mean?"

"Perhaps it means what did you whisper to Johanna at table with just the same look you wear at present?"

"I thought I was to obey orders and pay court to her," said Otto. "Do you command the contrary?"

"Indeed I do not."

"It really would be better to continue the farce," Otto went on in a graver tone. "Johann Leopold's jealousy is evident; it would be better to lead him upon a false scent——"

"And beguile two female hearts at the same time," Magelone interposed, laughing. "Oh, Don Juan, Don Juan!"

"Play the 'Don Giovanni' overture," Otto begged her. "You play it magnificently."

"Not to-day. There must be nothing but chorales to-day," she said. And with a coquettish glance she turned away towards the fire, where were her cousins and Aunt Thekla.

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 embarrassed. Her cousin came to her assistance. "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 passed 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 protÉgÉe 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 chink 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 space. "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 passion, 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 passionate desire. Therefore the man who rushes blindly, head first, into the maddest, unworthiest passion, 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 brass 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 passed 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 spacious cupboards were produced treasures of antique glass 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 peacock 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 anticipated 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 passed, 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.

"You were asleep, grandpapa, and Johann Leopold had to hurry to catch the two-o'clock train. He had something to attend to in town, he said, but would return to Thalrode in the four-o'clock train. If my cousin Waldemar comes, they will surely meet."

"Indeed they will. We may rely upon that. From their very infancy they always stood by each other in every silly prank," the Freiherr said, but in a tone so kindly that Aunt Thekla breathed afresh.

"How did you know all this, my dear Johanna?" Magelone asked, as the Freiherr resumed his walk.

"As I was starting for the village, Johann Leopold was just driving off," she replied, "and he took me and my bundles as far as the parsonage——"

"It was odd not to bid us good-by!" said Magelone.

Hildegard approached her. "Why, child, he probably feared your tender remonstrances," she said, scornfully, "or it may perhaps have occurred to him at the twelfth hour to purchase you a betrothal-gift."

Magelone shrugged her shoulders impatiently. At this moment old Christian entered with the lamp, followed by Otto, who handed a letter to the Freiherr. "From Waldemar," he said. "It has just been brought by an express from Thalrode."

"He's not coming; I knew it," whispered Magelone.

The Freiherr went to the light and began to read, his face brightening at every word. Before he had finished the sheet he cried out, "This is a surprise! The boy could not have pleased me more. He is betrothed!"

"Waldemar! Betrothed? To whom?" several voices exclaimed together.

"Hear what he says," said the Freiherr. "The letter is from Vienna. We now know what the urgent business was that kept him away at Christmas. But listen. I will spare you the beginning. Here: 'Since yesterday the happiest of men——' Of course. 'My betrothed, Maria Therese Antoinette Walburg, is the second daughter of Count Anton, the chief of the elder—that is, of the Protestant—branch. Her mother was a Rothkirch; her grandmother, Theodora Klausenburg, you used to know, my dear grandfather. Antoinette is said to resemble her. She is eighteen years old, with light-brown hair, blue eyes, a lovely colour, and is tall and stately, like all the Klausenburg women,—only, between ourselves, more graceful and elegant. Her loveliness, her modesty, her childish gayety, make all hearts her captives——' and so forth, and so on! He continues in that strain a long while, which is of small account, for the lad is in love. But the family is good, and this child probably takes after them. God bless them both!"

Aunt Thekla wiped her eyes; the Freiherr rose, and again paced the room to and fro. "To-morrow we will celebrate a double betrothal, and as soon as possible a double marriage!" he began again after a while. "This joy is quite unexpected. All my DÖnninghausens shall rejoice with me. I will give an entertainment that shall be the talk of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. As for you, Thekla, tell my steward to give you whatever you need for your infant-school."

"Thank you, dear Johann, a thousand times!" she said, blushing with pleasure, as she went to her brother and embraced him.

"That will do, sister, that will do!" he said, extricating himself from her embrace. "Come, be quick! Light the tree and send for the children. I want merry faces about me!"

In a few moments the room was illumined by the magic light of the Christmas-tree, and rang with merry childish voices, while little hands were eagerly lifted to receive the last of the tree's sweet fruits, which the great-grandfather detached and put into them. Hildegard and Hedwig, much excited, exchanged with Magelone and Otto information with regard to the Walburgs and Rothkirchs, while Aunt Thekla listened to the raging of the storm.

"Where can the Wildenhayns be, and Johann Leopold?" she said. "The carriage ought to have been back from Thalrode as soon as the express."

"Perhaps it is waiting for the eight-o'clock train," said Johanna.

"If I knew that it was waiting in Thalrode, a messenger might be sent," said Aunt Thekla. "But if Johann Leopold has remained in town——"

She did not finish the sentence. Old Christian entered, and begged Johanna to come into the corridor for a moment.

"What is the matter?" asked Aunt Thekla.

"Some one wishes to speak to the FrÄulein Johanna," the old man said, in evident agitation.

Johanna, thinking of Christine, went out hastily, to cut short further explanations; but instead of her whom she expected to see, she was confronted by a man, tall and broad-shouldered. "Dear Johanna!" he said, advancing and holding out his hand.

"Ludwig!" she exclaimed, delighted. But she was instantly struck by his pale, distressed look. "For God's sake, what has happened?" she asked, keeping his hand tightly clasped in both her own. "What brings you here?"

"I come from Hanover, from the death-bed of a friend. But that is not what is the matter. I must consult you."

They whispered together for a few moments, then Ludwig followed Christian up-stairs, and Johanna returned to the drawing-room.

With some hesitation she approached the Freiherr, who was now sitting before the fire, surrounded by the children. "Dear grandfather," she said, standing behind his chair, so that he could not see her face, "my foster-brother, Dr. Ludwig Werner, has come."

"Dr. Ludwig Werner?" the Freiherr repeated. "Yes, yes, I recollect. Well, where is he?"

Johanna used all her self-control. "He has not come for a visit," she said. "He has been in Hanover, and was going directly back to Lindenbad, but when the train stopped at Thalrode, Johann Leopold fell in leaving it, and——"

"Dead!" cried the Freiherr, sitting erect in his chair. "Say the word at once, without the torture of preparation," he added, as his sister came to him and took his hand.

"No, he lives; be assured of that," said Johanna. "He is only stunned by the fall, and that is why Ludwig has come with him. They have carried him to his room."

For a moment the Freiherr seemed utterly crushed, but with a mighty effort he rose and stood erect. "Come, Thekla," he said, in a monotone. "So long as he breathes let us hope!"