Bertha had seen him but once, as his captain had sent him up the country to get transportation for horses.
"That is bad; they should not have sent him there. O Ernst, poor, dear Ernst!" suddenly shrieked my wife.
She grew pale and fell back on a chair. We feared that she would faint. Bertha rushed to her aid, but she speedily recovered herself, and her trembling lips were the only sign, of the emotion she had passed through. She did not tell us why she had found it so wrong of them to send Ernst on that errand. She accompanied Bertha to her room, and stroking the light locks of little Victor, whom she had taken on her lap, said, "He looked just as you do when he was a little boy, except that he had blue eyes."
"Yes," said Bertha, "my husband has often noticed that Victor bears great resemblance to Ernst."
"And Uncle Ernst promised me a horse," said Victor.
"Did he?" said my wife, with pleased looks: "If he did that, it is all right, but sad enough for all. Still, others have their burdens to bear as well as we."
Martella's first meeting with Bertha as well as with Annette, resulted in mutual attraction.
Bertha was obliged to tell Martella all that she knew about Ernst, and while she was holding the hand of the strange child, the latter must have felt a consciousness of the candor and straightforwardness of Bertha's character, for she looked into her face with sparkling eyes.
Martella asked Bertha whether Ernst had sent the broken ring by her.
Bertha said he had not.