"I thought so!" she cried, triumphantly. "I knew you would not mind the rain!" Then, as she looked at him, she burst into a merry laugh. "Good heavens! how you look, poor fellow! You could not be wetter if you had fallen into the lake!"
Kurt laughed with her. How odd it was that the huge waterproof that she wore detracted not a whit from her beauty and grace! A gray waterproof can scarcely be called an elegant garment, but Celia looked lovely in this one. Her fresh rosy face smiled enchantingly from out of the hood that she had drawn over her head, and from beneath which tiny curls were rebelliously fluttering out into the wind and rain.
"It certainly is a 'fine, soaking rain,' as my uncle says," Kurt rejoined, laughing. "It has drenched me, but I have many a time tramped through a wood in worse weather than this, and even slept soundly on a hill-side in just such a pour, with only a soldier's blanket over me. The rain can do me no harm, but you, Fräulein von Hohenwald, are very wrong to come abroad in such weather."
"And yet you expected me to do it."
"No; I was sure you would prudently stay at home. It is no weather for you to ride in."
"No? Still, here I am, you see. Neither Pluto nor I ever mind the rain; but then we are neither of us at all prudent. And besides, you do not tell the truth. Why are you here if you thought I should not come? I had more confidence in you. I knew I should find you here, and I should have been terribly angry if you had stayed away for the rain. For indeed I had to see you to-day. I have so much to tell you. Only think, the new governess is really coming this evening!"
"Indeed? Then the Finanzrath has carried his point."
"Of course; just as he always does. He wrote to Fräulein Müller, and sent the letter to Frau von Adelung in Dresden. I could not help hoping that the Fräulein would decline to come, for papa consented to Werner's plan only upon condition that he should truthfully describe the life she would have to lead at Castle Hohenwald. Werner did so. He read his letter aloud to papa, Arno, and me, and I must confess he did not flatter any one of us. If I had been Fräulein Müller I never would have said 'yes' to such a letter."
"Did he give so terrible a description of the castle and its inmates?"
"The castle and all of us. He made Arno out a gloomy woman-hater, and called me a spoiled child. Was it not odious of him?"