"Anything but that, dearest Anna, you must not ask that; I am half mad with delight. My dear, good old father! How unjust I have been to him! How could I keep anything from him? It was shameful! oh, if I only had told him all about it the very first day when I met Kurt!"
Lucie said nothing; but she had her own opinion as to whether the result would have been a very happy one for Celia if she had told her father of her first meeting with Kurt. The girl went on pouring her innocent delight into Lucie's ears, and repeating that she owed it all to her darling Anna.
The castle clock struck four.
"At last!" Celia exclaimed, and begged Lucie to make the greatest haste, lest Kurt should have to wait. Her friend complied; it would have been cruel to detain the girl longer than was necessary to hasten along the broad road, down which Celia had so often galloped upon Pluto to the appointed spot.
They soon espied the light straw hat, and an instant afterward Kurt hurried towards them.
"I have fulfilled your wish, Herr von Poseneck," Lucie said, offering her hand to the young man.
"How can I thank you sufficiently for so doing! for relinquishing your purpose of referring my request to the Freiherr von Hohenwald----"
"No, no, dearest Kurt!" exclaimed Celia. "She did not relinquish it. Yes, you may well be surprised, you unprincipled fellow, who would have persuaded me to meet you again without the knowledge of my darling, kind old father. But, oh, Kurt, we are so happy, and Anna has done it all!" And the girl, amid tears and laughter, told her amazed lover of the success of Anna's exertions in his favour.
In his joy that there was no longer an insurmountable barrier between himself and his love, Kurt gladly promised to obey every condition imposed upon him by the Freiherr, declaring that never would he write so much as one word to his darling except under cover to her father.
When Lucie had explained to him all that she had promised in this way on his behalf she took no further part in the conversation, wandering along the grassy path a little in advance of the lovers, anxious that Celia should enjoy to the full every moment of this short hour of bliss, and lost in sad reflections as to her own future.