"You are still suffering, for you are ill."

"No, no! I am well enough, only--but I will not speak of myself. Thea, tell me one thing, are you happy? Does Bernhard write often, and are his letters what they should be?"

Thea's cheeks flushed and grew pale; her hands trembled as she collected, with nervous haste, the various letters lying upon her table, and which Lothar, who watched her narrowly, could see were postmarked 'Berlin.'

For a moment she could not reply in words, but Lothar, believing that he read an answer in her face to his words, cried, "Oh, I see,--you know it all! They have written you all about it from Berlin, have they not?"

"Hush!" she said, imperatively, her face dyed with a burning blush.

"How dare you touch upon that subject?"

"Oh, it is just that which drove me mad,--which made me dream what I said of Werner possible," Lothar exclaimed, pa.s.sionately. "I knew how unhappy you must be. I hate Bernhard for it, but I hated Werner still more, because I thought that in your misery you----"

Thea had turned away, and in silent indignation would have left the room, but Lothar interposed between her and the door, and, throwing himself at her feet, cried, "Forgive me! forgive me! My sin is my excuse; for I love you, Thea, I love you! more--far more--than all the rest!"

Suddenly he sprang to his feet. A servant entered with some commonplace message.

Lothar stood for a moment as though paralyzed. He heard the man's voice and then Thea's as though from some vast distance, and when he looked around Thea had vanished, and the servant was asking whether the Herr Lieutenant would drive home in the open wagon or the covered carriage.

For an instant Lothar stared at him in bewilderment. Then he pa.s.sed his hand across his brow. "No; the Countess's kindness is unnecessary," he said, when the explanation of the scene dawned upon him. "I am no longer giddy, and I can ride home."

He left the room, and in the hall he encountered Alma, who had dried her tears and bathed her eyes.

"Farewell, my dear Alma," he said, with a deliberate gravity, almost a solemnity of manner, quite foreign to him.

"Are you going away?" the girl asked, all unconsciously, and impressed by this strange mood of his.

"Going away? No--that is--yes--perhaps so. At all events, I bid you farewell."

She heard him go down the stairs slowly and heavily. A sudden inexplicable foreboding weighed upon her like lead. She felt as though some evil threatened him, and she longed to avert it, to call him back.

She started to do so, when she heard the voices of the servants in the hall below, and reflected that she did not know what to say to him. She ran into the bow-windowed room, and looked down the avenue. A flock of crows hovered above it; they were the only living things in sight. Alma waited. One of the crows that had alighted in the road flew into the air, and instantly afterward a lonely horseman rode along between the snow-clad trees. Alma pressed her forehead against the window-panes, but the rider never turned to look towards the castle. His head was bent forward on his breast, and he seemed to pay no heed to his horse.

Like some shadow horse and rider appeared and disappeared at regular intervals among the poplars lining the avenue. Alma gazed after them until the last glimpse of Lothar had vanished in the wintry mist that had begun to veil the landscape.

"Farewell," she whispered, and her heart was as heavy as if she had parted from him forever.

Suddenly she roused herself from her revery. "How selfish I am!" she thought. "I stand dreaming here, thinking of all kinds of impossible misfortunes, while Thea is alone. Ah, we have enough real sorrow to bear! There is no need to invent fancied woes." She went to look for her sister, whom she had some difficulty in finding.

Thea had retained sufficient self-possession to tell the servant that her brother-in-law was ill, and to order a carriage for him; and then, like some scared bird, she had flown through the castle, and taken refuge in the conservatory adjoining the drawing-room. Here she sank upon a seat,--the same seat where she had so often sat with Bernhard before their marriage. She pressed her hands upon her throbbing heart, and then upon her eyes, which were dry, hot, and tearless. Could all that had happened in the last hour be real? The wild, insane words in which Lothar had told her of Werner's love and of his own still rang in her ears. Could such things be? Had she in her utter unconsciousness so deceived herself? Or had Lothar actually spoken in the delirium of fever? She sighed heavily. These questions, press upon her as they might, vanished before that other: Was it possible that she had lost Bernhard's heart,--nay, that perhaps she had never possessed it,--that he had deceived her from the first? "No," her own heart answered, "that cannot be! And yet----" She selected a letter from among those she had gathered up from her table and brought hither with her, and read it once more. It was from Adela Hohenstein, and addressed to Alma, who had taken it from the post on her way to Eichhof that morning, and had read it in the carriage. She had been unable to conceal from her sister the agitation its contents had produced. Thea had questioned her, suspecting that she had heard some news of Bernhard, and Alma had finally been induced to show her the letter. Adela wrote in her usual thoughtless harum-scarum way all that she had heard and seen of Bernhard. She had frequently, at the house of one of her relatives, met Bernhard and Julutta Wronsky together, and her letter was evidently written in the first flush of her anger after one of these occasions.

"Let me tell Thea that for at least a year she ought never even to condescend to look at that husband of hers," she wrote upon the last page, "and then perhaps he may come to learn that she is a thousand times prettier and better and lovelier than this detestable Frau von Wronsky. For I have learned thus much of the world, that men like to be ill-treated; they make all the good women unhappy, but they will lay down their lives for the worthless ones. Papa is the only exception; it does not spoil him to be loved and petted. He is kinder and dearer than words can tell; but all other men are monsters, your Bernhard as well as the rest." Then there was a postscript:

"Dearest Alma, for heaven's sake don't give Thea my message. I have reflected that it can only do mischief. She is married to him, and they must get along together as they best can. It can do no kind of good for other people to meddle and talk. I would tear up this letter, but it is well that you at least should know what men are worth, and every word that I have written is true. So I send my letter just as it is, and only beg you to say nothing to Thea about it.

"P. S. the second. _a propos_, yesterday I met Walter in the street, and I stopped him and asked him to come and see us. Do you know what his reply was? 'I am very sorry, Fraulein von Hohenstein' (that is what he called me), 'that my studies leave me no time for visiting.' What do you think of that? Just like men in general, and the Eichhofs in particular."

At another time this letter of Adela's might not have made such an impression upon Thea as it had produced to-day, when her heart was filled with doubts and fears with regard to Bernhard. Had she not foreboded all that Adela had written?

Still, after she had re-read the letter, it might perhaps not have affected her so deeply as at first had not the tidings it contained been confirmed by Lothar's wild words. Bernhard's conduct was then striking enough to be a theme for Berlin gossip! Oh, if only his devotion had been shown towards any other woman! But that he should turn to this Frau von Wronsky, with whom he had at first denied all acquaintance, and afterwards confessed to it under such strange circ.u.mstances; that it should be she, the woman with whom Bernhard had desired that his wife might have as little intercourse as possible!

Thea's thoughts were in a whirl,--an abyss seemed yawning between Bernhard and herself which all her love could not bridge over. She raised her eyes. Above her trembled the mysterious fantastic blossom of the orchid to which Bernhard had once compared the Countess Wronsky.

Ah, whither had they gone, those bright summer days when he had called Thea his rose of May and had promised to surround her with perpetual sunshine?

"If this is all true, he does not deserve that I should weep for him,"

she said, aloud. "No, he does not deserve it," she repeated, firmly, closing her quivering lips. But then she thought of her child, of her lost happiness, of her lonely youth, and she wept bitterly.

Thus Alma found her at length, and led her back to the bow-windowed room, where a lamp was now lighted.

"Do not speak," Thea entreated, and Alma only put her arms about her and held her in a tender embrace. But Thea was restless. She sprang up and went to her child. Even there she could not stay long, but returned to the bow-windowed room, and paced it hurriedly to and fro. She could not talk to her young sister of what was agitating her. Why, she seemed to herself almost guilty when she remembered Lothar's pa.s.sionate words.

Lothar,--there was another dark spot in her thoughts! Ah! from all sides black clouds were gathering above her, and she could do nothing save wait quietly until the tempest broke. She was condemned to quiet, and what could be more horrible in her present agitation?

Alma felt that the struggle in Thea's soul must be fought out alone.

She went silently hither and thither, looked after the child, presided at the tea-table, and only now and then approached her sister to press her hand or to imprint a kiss upon her forehead. She went to the window and looked out into the night, now illumined by the rising moon. Her heart was filled with a yearning melancholy, and, reproach herself for it as she might at such a time, she could not restrain her thoughts from deserting Thea and centring about Lothar. He had looked so strange, so disturbed, when he had spoken that last 'farewell.'

Suddenly her attention was attracted towards the avenue, which lay like burnished silver beneath the moon. Was there not a shadow stirring there? And could she not distinguish the sound of horses' hoofs? She peered eagerly out, but the moonlight was deceptive,--she might be mistaken. Then she heard doors closing below and steps coming through the antechamber. Thea had sunk into the arm-chair at her writing-table, and with pen in hand was pondering upon a letter which she believed it her duty to write, and for which she could find not only no words but not even one clear idea. Alma hastened to the door.

"Who is there?" she asked, so quickly that Thea looked up startled.

"Herr Lieutenant von Werner begs----" the entering servant began.

"Lieutenant Werner,--how, so late?" Alma repeated, and her slight figure trembled as she added, beneath her breath, "That means misfortune."

Thea had risen. "What, what is coming now?" she thought. "Show Herr von Werner up!" she said, in a sharp tone of command very unlike her. But Herr von Werner had followed close upon the footman's heels, and stood at the door. Alma could not utter a word; she only gazed anxiously into his pale face, and steadied herself by an arm-chair as though she were afraid of falling. Thea went firmly to meet him. She had never borne herself so proudly, her dark eyes had never been so haughty and cold, as, without seeming to notice Werner's agitation, she asked, calmly, "What brings you to us so late, Herr von Werner? It must be something very unusual."

"Yes, madame, it is so, and very sad."

Alma could hardly stand. Thea still looked at Werner with an unnaturally calm expression, and with not the faintest suspicion of what was to come.

"Lothar!" came breathed like a sigh from Alma's pale lips.

Thea's thoughts were not of him. "Tell me. I need no preparation; I am prepared," she said.

"Your brother-in-law met with an accident in riding home from Eichhof, and is severely injured."

Now Thea too grew pale.

"Was he thrown? Is his life in danger?" she asked, in low, uncertain tones, while Alma's eyes never for one moment left Werner's face.

"His condition leaves little room for hope. He was not thrown,--an accident, probably the result of carelessness----"

"He is dead! he has shot himself!" Alma suddenly gasped. Her gloomy forebodings had at last found distinct expression.

Thea looked at Werner. He was very pale, but he uttered no contradiction.

Alma sank on her knees and buried her face in her hands. Thea slowly pa.s.sed her hand across her forehead. "Dead,--shot," she repeated softly, as if hardly able to apprehend the meaning of the words. The erect figure tottered, and before Werner could spring forward to support her she fell fainting on the floor.

Alma raised her head at Werner's exclamation of terror, and saw her sister's unconscious form. She called the servants and did all that was necessary to restore Thea, while she herself felt hardly aware of what had happened.

She, the younger and weaker of the two sisters, had not fainted, while to Thea the thought that she might have had some share in Lothar's death had been like a destroying flash of lightning. Alma did not succ.u.mb, but deep darkness seemed to envelop her, in which she was aware only of the present moment and its duties; all else was a blank.

She felt a dull pain in her head and heart, and would fain have cast herself on the earth and have wept pa.s.sionately. But shame lest she should betray feelings that only the closest and dearest ties with Lothar could justify, restrained her, and Thea's helpless condition gave her a power of self-control of which she never could have believed herself capable.