"You knew my husband?" asked Althea, drying her eyes.
"Knew him?" rejoined the stranger, in the enthusiasm of recollection--"We made our first essay in arms together. Has he never talked to you of Caspar the Sparrenberger, surnamed Tausdorf?"
"Often, and with warm friendship. But he deemed you dead."
"I joined the campaign against the Turks, and lay dangerously wounded in Transylvania.----That is your son?" he asked, in sudden emotion; and lifting up the little Henry, he kissed him heartily--"His true eye betrays the father--."
He set the boy down again, and paced hastily up and down the room to collect himself.
"We are both too much agitated," he resumed, "to carry on this conversation any longer. Permit me now to deliver a letter to you, which your friend Sternberg, of Gitschin, requested me to take with me, when she understood that I was going to Schweidnitz."
"You know my Thekla, then?"
"We are near neighbours and good friends. My father lives at Tirschkokrig, not far from Gitschin, and I was frequently with the Sternberg family. The lady Thekla has talked so much of you, and so much in your praise, that I knew, before I saw, you."
"I doubt whether she has shown me truly, for friendship is a partial painter."
"Forgive me if I contradict you. Such, as you now stand before me, has your beautiful and friendly form long floated before my imagination."