A few moments after Lucie had left the Inspector's room Werner entered it. He had watched her from his window, had seen the letter in her hand, and had been filled with vague misgivings. "That letter I must see!" he had said to himself.
"Can a messenger be sent on horseback to A---- to catch the evening mail?" he asked of the Inspector, who was just putting Lucie's letter into the bag.
"Certainly, Herr Finanzrath, very easily," Hauk replied. "Old John can go on Fräulein Celia's Pluto; there is plenty of time."
"Give me the post-bag then,--I have an important letter to send; and tell John to saddle Pluto, and I will have it ready for him."
The Inspector handed him the bag, which Werner instantly carried with him to his room and opened. With a triumphant smile he took from it Lucie's letter addressed to Fräulein Adèle von Guntram. "I thought so," he muttered to himself. "I am just in time." Then tearing off the envelope he read:
"What will you think of me, dear Adèle, if a few hours after writing my last letter I tell you not to heed the request it contained? I hope soon to be able to let you know why I do this, but I cannot tell you to-day. I cannot leave Castle Hohenwald, and so you are relieved of the burden of looking for another situation for me. Farewell, dear; you will soon hear further from your LUCIE."
Werner dropped the letter disappointed. "Nothing more?" he muttered. "I need not have opened this letter, although I had better know what she intends to do." He tried to put the letter in its envelope again, but it could not be done, the latter was too much torn. There was nothing for it but to destroy it. He tore it up therefore, and threw it into his waste-paper basket. Then putting several unimportant letters into the post-bag, he took it out to John, and despatched the old man upon his useless errand.
The time at which the old Freiherr expected his family to assemble about him every evening in the garden-room had come. Werner on his way thither encountered his brother, who was awaiting him at the foot of the staircase. In a few indignant words Arno informed him that Fräulein Müller had acquainted him with the manner in which her well-meant warning had been received, and said all that was possible in so short a time to induce his brother to leave Hohenwald as quickly as he could. "In the castle," he added, "there are none who do not look upon your fine-spun schemes as treasonable plotting, and it is unjust that peril should threaten all on your account."