Next morning before breakfast Mr. Timm was gone. He had asked the baron to send him to the nearest town from which he could take post-horses. The baron asked him hospitably why he was in such a hurry, and if he would not stay a few days to recover from his arduous labors? But Albert pretended to have received an important order--the postman had indeed brought him a letter--and the baron ordered the taciturn coachman to get ready his heavy bays. Mr. Timm bade all a brief farewell and drove off. Nobody missed him--nobody, with the exception of the little Genevese. But she shed her tears in the retirement of her chamber, and the company saw nothing of her grief but her eyes red from weeping, which she intended to explain by a pretended headache, if anybody should inquire. But no one inquired.

They all had enough to do with themselves! All were fully occupied with what was nearest to their own hearts.

The death of the old woman was another blow to Oswald. Again he had lost one of the few beings in whom he was interested. It seemed as if his troubled mind was never to have any peace--as if the last bright light was to fade on his sky, and deep night was to surround him on all sides. He had seen Mother Claus but rarely, and yet it had always been under such peculiar circumstances as to make in each case a deep and lasting impression on his mind; he felt as if he had lost an old relative, whose tender affections he had rewarded with indifference and ingratitude. When he was last at her hut with Albert, he had determined not to lose sight again of the old woman, to ask her if he could help her, to inquire if anything could be done for her. She had thought of him in her last hour, while he had not had a minute for her in all these days! She had wished to bless him before she died--what had he ever done to deserve such a blessing?--It was of little use now that he provided for her funeral, that he and Bruno accompanied her to her last resting-place when they carried the simple coffin on a farm wagon to the graveyard at Fashwitz. It was of no use that he wrote to Grunwald, ordering a small marble tablet, so that her grave might not be too soon obliterated. But he thought how she would have thanked him during her lifetime for the smallest part of all the trouble he took for her now that she was dead!

Was it because he had not deserved it, that the blessing was not fulfilled? The peace which she had implored for him with the last breath of her lips would not come to his heart. Like a desperate man he struggled with the maddening passion which had overwhelmed him of a sudden like a fierce hurricane, but every day convinced him but more and more of his inability to resist. He spent daily several hours in the company of the beautiful girl; she met him with her kindly smile on her proud lips as soon as the bright summer morning had ended the short night, which yet to him seemed so long! At table he sat opposite to her; her lessons by his side, and a hundred other occasions, inevitable in so small a family at a country place, brought him again and again in contact with the lovely one. He himself called his passion not love, but friendship, deep interest--he tried to persuade himself that he would have felt the same friendship, the same interest, if his relations to Melitta had remained unchanged,--if accident had never revealed to him Melitta's image in a new light Oswald would have been the first to discover that it spoke neither of prudence nor of loyalty to make deceitful accident the judge of the weal or woe of a woman he loved so dearly, and that all these boastful reasonings were nothing more than cunning sophisms of a wild passion; he would have discovered this in any one else; but we lack only too frequently that prudence and loyalty in our own affairs which we always have ready for others, and to think and talk wisely and to act foolishly are, it is well known, different things, which still can very well go hand in hand.

It is true that an impassioned heart could not very well resist being touched by so much beauty, grace, and mind combined in one person. All who came in contact with Helen felt the charm, the wonderful charm, she possessed; it seemed almost impossible not to take at once part for or against her with enthusiasm, so that even in the servants' hall lively scenes occurred, in which her attractions were discussed. The taciturn coachman would growl out that all was not gold that glitters, and the good old cook would reply that the angels of course never came to visit bad and envious men; then followed an angry and unprofitable discussion about bad men in general and in particular, which led to strange and sharp sayings on both sides, while the master and his family were handled without gloves, and much was said down stairs that would have struck horror into the hearts of the company up stairs. Thus they were pretty well agreed in those lower regions that Baron Felix had not come to Castle Grenwitz for amusement only, and his valet hinted that some people could say a good deal about that, if discretion was not the first duty of a good servant. He only desired to add, that his master was apt to carry out whatever he undertook, and that, in his opinion, there was not a young lady in this world who could resist his master for any length of time--an assertion which called forth most violent opposition on the part of the ladies present.

What these people discovered, Oswald's eye, sharpened a hundred-fold by love, could not overlook. He saw daily how the baron made every effort to win his fair cousin's love, how he brought into play all the skill he had acquired in a thousand intrigues on the smooth floor of brilliant salons in the capital, all the cleverness with which Nature had lavishly endowed him, and all the advantages he enjoyed as a near relative. He could not fail to see that the baroness sustained these efforts with wise discretion in every useful way, seconding Felix as indefatigably as ably. He would say: No! or remain silent, when Bruno, after dinner or during a walk, would tell him, with angry face, of some new impudence of "that ape Felix," but he knew very well that the boy had seen or heard right, and his only consolation was that Helen's pride would never consent to a union with a man so totally unworthy of her hand.

As for Miss Helen, she went her quiet way, apparently looking neither to the right nor the left, only she had become still more reserved in her manner, and more sparing of her smiles. She also felt perfectly well that she would have to stand alone in the struggle which was impending; that she would appeal in vain to the heart of a cold, selfish mother, the weak mind of an old father, or the courtesy of a frivolous, reckless man like Felix, and that she would have to rely on no one but herself. But this consciousness, which would have overwhelmed any other girl of Helen's age, only served to rouse and to inflame the courage of this high-hearted creature, in whom the whole power of the family seemed to be concentrated, only in a nobler and purer form. The reconciliation which had taken place between her and her mother had only been apparent. Two persons are never more strongly opposed to each other than when they aim at different ends, and yet are equally well endowed with strength of will and powers of endurance. There was no permanent union possible between the baroness, who knew and pursued only worldly purposes, and her daughter, who followed an ideal which might have been exaggerated, but was always lofty and pure. Helen spoke freely of this in the letters, which she wrote more frequently now than formerly, to her dearest and most intimate friend, Miss Mary Burton. "Dearest Mary," she said in one of them, "how often have you accused your fate, which loaded you with riches but robbed you of all--parents, brothers and sisters, and even cousins--all those friends of both sexes, which nature herself gives us for our way through life! But, believe me, dear girl, there is a sadder fate than yours. The melancholy you feel when you think of your loneliness in the world has something sweet about it. How often have you spoken to me of your brother Harry, whom you lost in the fall vigor of early youth, and of your sister Hetty, who died a mere bud. You told me then that they were not and could never be dead for you, because they lived brighter and fairer in your memory. You said that the shades of the departed were everywhere hovering around you, and that you felt far happier in their society than among the cold, selfish men of this world. Oh, surely life is not the first of earthly gifts, but love is. To live without love is useless; love without life can still be sublime. Your relatives are dead, but they live in you; my relatives live, but they are dead for me. It is a sad word, darling Mary, but I will not blot it out again, for it is true; and we have pledged each other to conceal nothing, even though the confession be ever so painful. Yes, they are dead for me, my relatives, and although I would give half of my life to call them back to life, good wishes can do nothing here. Who lives for us? Surely only those in whose hearts we can always find an asylum, to protect us against every grief that oppresses us and against every doubt that distresses us--those who wish only our happiness, and do not find it in the fulfilment of their own wishes, in the gratification of their own desires. And yet, this is the case with my relatives. Can I open my heart to them? Must I not always fear to offend them if I speak what I think? Do they care for my wishes? Do they not rather distress me with their plans and suggestions, which make the blood curdle in my veins? To be sure, my dear old papa--he would not abandon me if matters came to the worst; but, great Heavens, is it not bad enough to have to fear a worst? Ah, Mary, I cannot tell you how strange, how painful even the spirit that reigns in this house is to me; how I long to be back at school, where, if the outer world was closed to us, a fairer and a richer world was open to us in our dreams, and especially in our cordial friendship! Here I have no one whom I could admit into this inner world, no one but a boy, who, of course, cannot understand me, and a man whom I could love if he were my brother, but from whom I am parted by an impassable gulf. You know of whom I speak. I will not conceal from you that of late I have become more deeply interested in this man than I should ever have thought possible--a confession which may challenge your scorn, but which I owe to you, notwithstanding, from the sacred nature of our covenant. He stands alone in the world like yourself; his mother he has never known; his father died years ago, and he never had brother or sister. He is quite young yet, but great hearts live fast in a little while, and he must have seen and suffered much. There is a shadow of melancholy on his brow, and in his large, dark blue eyes, which is irresistibly touching to me; at times his lips quiver with pain, so that I would give anything if I could go up to him and say: Tell me what pains you, perhaps I can help you, and if I cannot do that, I can at least sympathize with you. You know, dear Mary, that I am a thoroughbred aristocrat, and that I have an innate antipathy to all that is common and plebeian. We have both of us grown up in the conviction that the lower classes lack not merely the nobility of birth, but also the nobility of thought, and that we cannot count, in them, upon an appreciation of what is best and highest in the world. I must tell you now that I have changed my views in this respect somewhat since I have come back to Grenwitz; that I have at least found how this rule also has its exceptions. Stein is such an exception. I never yet heard a word from his lips that would betray the plebeian, but, on the contrary, many that were spoken from my soul, and that found a loud echo in my heart. He speaks with more music in his voice than I ever heard before, so that I often try for hours afterwards to recall to my mind the manner and modulation with which he said one or the other thing. There is an indescribable charm for me in his sweet, melodious voice. I always felt as if men were speaking from the heart, and I could say, after a few words: This man has a good heart, and that man has a bad heart. And with Stein this proves to be correct. I have seen many proofs of his good heart. Thus, there died a few days ago an immensely old woman in the village, who was once upon a time housekeeper at the chÂteau, and drew a little pension from papa. Nobody took any notice of her except Stein, and he took care of her burial, and accompanied, together with Bruno, her remains to the grave-yard. They have blamed him for that at the house here, and I had to hear very heartless remarks about it; especially from a certain person, who ought to thank God if she ever thinks of a kind act, much less does one. But I will not honor this person by saying anything more about her. I have determined that she shall henceforth no longer exist for me, and hence I will not even speak of her any more...."

This letter, in which Miss Helen spoke so unreservedly about the persons by whom she was surrounded, never was answered, for it never reached its destination.