He made a face, then held out to her his brown hairy hand. "You're the girl for me!" he exclaimed, seizing and almost crushing her fingers in his grasp. "Out with whatever is in your heart! A great pity that you're going to marry. A God-gifted creature like yourself belongs on horseback. And—down with the world!" He swung his arm as if it held a riding-whip, by way of completing his sentence.
"Dear Johanna, you must not take amiss what he says," Helena began, with a furtive smile.
"Let us alone, we understand each other!" he interrupted her. And turning to Johanna, he continued: "Let us talk together like friends. If your father, the actor, is unpopular up there,"—pointing with his thumb over his shoulder towards the castle,—"I, the equestrian artist, must be still more so. You need not reply: I know the talk. 'Players, strollers, vagabonds,' that is the verdict passed upon us by the aristocracy and the respectable public, the devil fly away with them!"
"Carlo!" cried Helena.
His eyes flashed. "Am I to take it all quietly when such a stuck-up set turn me out of doors? Me, Carlo Batti, renowned in Paris, in Berlin, in St. Petersburg, as well as in Vienna!" he shouted, angrily. "Come, we can stay here no longer. I must go to Remmingen to look for some horses. You will drive there with me."
"You said we might stay here, Uncle Carlo!" cried the child. "I want to see the castle where my Johanna lives. Mamma promised me I should."
Carlo laughed scornfully. "The castle,—yes, you shall see it, if only the outside," he said. Taking the child to the window, he continued: "Do you see that ugly old barn up there? They call that the castle, and it is full of ugly old cats who would eat you up, poor little mouse!"
His joke seemed to restore his good humour. He turned to Johanna and said, "Drive with us to Remmingen. I am sorry I have not my Mustapha here; we might have a ride together. But we must content ourselves with the hack. 'Need drives the devil to eat flies.'"
Johanna hesitated to accept the invitation; but Lisbeth hung upon her arm and begged so hard, "Come with us, do!" that her sister could not resist her.
There was no opportunity, however, for any quiet, uninterrupted talk. While they were driving to Remmingen, Carlo Batti held forth himself; and when he left them in the inn there while he went to inspect some horses, Helena fell upon Johanna's neck, exclaiming that she had been pining for months for this moment,—for the opportunity of unburdening her heart. And then she wept for her Roderich, and adjured Johanna not to consider her speedy second marriage as disloyalty to him whom she 'had adored, and never could forget.'