Wolfgang laid his hand upon the horse's mane: "Erna, one question before we part. After my final interview with your uncle to-morrow I shall, of course, not enter his house again, and you are going far away with your husband. Do you look for happiness at his side?"
"Ah, you need not repulse me so sternly! No self-interest lurks behind my question. My sentence I listened to from your lips on that moonlit night upon the Wolkenstein. Even were you free I should be hopeless, for you never could forgive my wooing of another."
"No,--never!" The words were harsh in their decision.
"I know it, and hence these last words of warning. Ernst Waltenberg is not the man to make such a woman as yourself happy. His love is rooted in the egotism that is the basis of his entire nature. He never will ask himself whether he may not be torturing by his jealous passion the woman whom he loves, and how will you endure constant companionship with a man to whom all the lofty ideals which are to you inspiration are but dead ideas? At last I have learned to know--dearly as the knowledge has been purchased--that there is something loftier and better than the self which once bounded my horizon. He never will learn this!"
Erna's lips quivered; she had long known it far better than any one could tell her. But what availed such knowledge? For her also it was too late.
"You are speaking of my betrothed, Herr Elmhorst," she said, in a tone of reproof,--"and to me. Not another word of the kind, I entreat!"
Wolfgang bowed and retired: "You are right, Fräulein von Thurgau; but they were farewell words, and as such may be forgiven."
She inclined her head in assent, and was about to turn away, when Waltenberg appeared on the edge of the forest, urging his horse towards the pair. He and the engineer-in-chief exchanged the coldly courteous greetings habitual to them in what had become their almost daily intercourse. They spoke of the weather, and of the president's arrival,--Ernst being now first aware of the barricade in the road.
"The men are unconscionably dilatory about their blasting," said Wolfgang, glad to find an opportunity to cut short the interview. "I will go and hasten them; you shall not have to wait long."