“Lilly or no one!”
“But as she will not have you, my poor Conrad?”
“Do you think I am the first who has been met by a refusal, and has gone back to the same lady a second and a third time, and has been accepted at the fourth offer, just to stop his importunity? Lilly has not fallen in love with me, which is a matter not easily to be accounted for, but is still a fact. That under these circumstances she should have resisted the temptation, which for so many maidens is irresistible, to become a wife, and would not accept an offer which in a worldly point of view would be a desirable one, that seems to me most good in her, and I am more in love with her than ever. Gradually my devotion will touch her and awaken a return of love, and then, dearest Martha, you will become my sister-in-law. I hope you will not go against me?”
“I? Oh no! On the contrary, your system of perseverance pleases me. With time and the exhibition of tenderness one can always succeed in ‘wooing and winning,’ as the English call it. But as to minnen und gewinnen,[5] our young gentlemen seem hardly disposed to take the necessary trouble. They want not to strive after and gain their happiness, but to pluck it without any trouble, like some wayside flower.”
In a fortnight Tilling was back in Vienna, as I heard, and yet he did not come to my house. I could not, of course, expect to meet him in people’s drawing-rooms, since his bereavement kept him away from all society. Still I had hoped that he would have come, or at least written to me; but one day after another passed and did not bring the expected visit or letter.
“I cannot think, Martha, what has come to you,” said Aunt Mary to me one morning. “For some time you have been so out of humour, so distraite, so—I don’t know what to call it. You are very wrong not to lend an ear to any of your suitors. This solitary existence, as I have said from the very first, is not good for you. The consequence of it is these low spirits which distinguish you just now. Have you quite forgotten your Easter devotions? They would help to do you good.”
“I think that both things—I mean both marrying and going to confession—should be done for love of the thing itself, not as a remedy for low spirits. None of my suitors please me; and as for confession——”
“Well, it is high time for that; to-morrow is Maundy Thursday. Have you tickets for the foot-washing?”
“Yes, papa has sent me some, but I really do not know whether I shall go.”
“Oh! but you must. There is nothing more beautiful and more elevating than this ceremony. The triumph of Christian humility. The emperor and empress prostrating themselves to the earth to wash the feet of poor men and women in their service. Does not that symbolise well how small and insignificant is earthly majesty before the heavenly?”