Walpurga moved her best furniture into Irma's room. Hansei did not interpose a word. "Aren't you too lonely here?" asked Walpurga, after she had arranged everything as well as possible in so short a time.
"Not at all. There is no place in all the world lonely enough for me. You've so much to do now; don't worry about me. I must now arrange things within myself. I see how good you and yours are; fate has directed me kindly."
"Oh, don't talk that way. If you hadn't given me the money, how could we have bought the farm? This is really your own."
"Don't speak of that," said Irma, with a sudden start, "never mention that money to me again."
Walpurga promised, and merely added that Irma needn't be alarmed at the old man who lived in the room above hers, and who, at times, would talk to himself and make a loud noise. He was old and blind. The children teased and worried him, but he wasn't bad and would harm no one. Walpurga offered, at all events, to leave Gundel with Irma for the first night; but Irma preferred to be alone.
"You'll stay with us; won't you?" said Walpurga hesitatingly. "You won't have such bad thoughts again?"
"No, never. But don't talk now, my voice pains me and so does yours, too. Good-night! leave me alone."
Irma sat by the window and gazed out into the dark night.
Was it only a day since she had passed through such terrors? Suddenly she sprang from her seat with a shudder. She had seen Black Esther's head rising out of the darkness, had again heard her dying shriek, had beheld the distorted face and the wild, black tresses.--Her hair stood on end. Her thoughts carried her to the bottom of the lake, where she now lay dead. She opened the window and inhaled the soft, balmy air. She sat by the open casement for a long while, and suddenly heard some one laughing in her room above her.
"Ha! ha! I won't do you the favor! I won't die! I won't die! Pooh, pooh! I'll live till I'm a hundred years old and then I'll get a new lease of life."