Old man, old man, it is your teaching that has undone me; do you reproach me now that it has wrought my ruin?
Basil Jennico flung his pen from him; the logs in the hearth had burnt themselves to white ash; his candles were guttering in their sockets, and behind the close-drawn curtains the faint dawn was spreading over a world of snow. The wind still howled, the storm was still unabated.
“Another day,” groaned he, “another hateful day!” He flung his arms before him and his head down upon them. So sleep came upon him; and so old János, creeping in a little later, red-eyed from his watchful night, found him. The sleeper woke as the man, with hands rough and gnarled, yet tender as a woman’s, strove to lift him to an easier attitude; woke and looked at him with a fixed semi-conscious stare.
“Ottilie!” he cried wildly, and suddenly brought back to grey reality stopped and clasped his head. There was in the old servant’s hard and all but immutable face so wistful a yearning of kindred sorrow that, suddenly catching sight of it in the midst of his despair, the young man broke down and fell forward like a child upon that faithful breast.
“Courage, honoured master,” said János, “we will find her again.”
PART II
