The next instant Johanna was at her side. "Dear Magelone," she began, gently, and would have taken her hand, but her cousin turned hastily away. "Leave me!" she cried. And, rushing up-stairs to her room, she closed the door and shot the bolt behind her.
"Oh, this hypocrite!" she exclaimed, and raised her clasped hands to heaven. "She thrusts herself forward everywhere. I cannot endure it any longer,—no, I cannot!"
She sank into an arm-chair, and wept in all the abandon of a child. Suddenly she sat erect, and wiped away her tears. "What folly!" she said to herself. "Am I helpless and unarmed? I am more beautiful than my rival; ought I not also to be more skilled,—cleverer? It is worth the trial. Otto must and shall return to me."
CHAPTER XI.
RECOVERY.
Again the days passed calmly and quietly at Dönninghausen, but they wore a different aspect from those which had preceded Christmas. Then the Freiherr had been the centre around which everything revolved, now it was Johann Leopold. Ludwig had pronounced all exciting causes dangerous for his patient, and begged that all his wishes might, as far as possible, be fulfilled. Therefore every one whose presence he requested was relieved from all other claim; even the meals, from which at other times only serious indisposition could excuse any member of the family, might be disregarded for Johann Leopold's sake.
With the egotism of an invalid, he required that either Ludwig or Aunt Thekla should be beside him all day, even when he was sleeping.
He took pleasure also in his grandfather's visits, so long as the old Herr could sit still; but as soon as he began, according to his habit, to pace the room to and fro, the sick man grew so restless as to oblige Ludwig courteously to dismiss the Freiherr.
"The lad is like a nervous girl," the latter would then say, with an irritated knitting of his brows; but the next moment he would add, "Well, we must be satisfied with seeing him as well as he is; by and by he will be perfectly reasonable again."