"My child, how can you say so?" Aunt Thekla admonished her.
"And why not?" Magelone replied. "You all of you have such a passion for the truth, why should I not say that I like Berlin a thousand, nay, a million times better than Dönninghausen,—that I have been better entertained in papa's meanest garrison-town than here?" She yawned. "Every morning when I wake I wonder why the slumber of the Sleeping Beauty does not overtake us."
As she said this, she glanced from beneath her drooping eyelids towards Johann Leopold. She wanted to vex him: he had been too disagreeable. But he rose with an air of indifference,—the bell for the second breakfast had just rung,—approached her, and offered her his arm.
"With your views I should have you on my side if I were to imitate the doctor and take a flight into the world," he said. "But no more at present; our grandfather must know nothing of it as yet."
Again they sat at table side by side as before the accident, and Magelone forced herself to discuss indifferent topics indifferently, but all the while the question would obtrude itself, "What did her cousin's 'into the world' mean?" Was he only jesting, or was it a concealed menace, or the mere whim of a sick man?
"He is too indolent to go away,"—it was thus she consoled herself,—"and grandpapa would not allow it, nor would I." So long as she could consider Johann Leopold as securely her own he was more than indifferent to her, but now when it looked as if he were freeing himself, withdrawing from her sway, she wanted at all hazards to hold him fast, and this not from calculation alone. He had repulsed her advances to-day, but ice does not melt beneath the first sunbeam, and her amiability must conquer, like the sunshine, through persistency. If the doctor were only gone! His keen, observing glance made her uncomfortable.
Her wish was shortly to be fulfilled; Ludwig departed on the following morning. Very early, while he was busy packing, Johann Leopold came to his room. "I do not mean to disturb you," he said, throwing himself down on a sofa, "but I cannot spare one moment of you. You have spoiled me; I shall be doubly lonely now."
Ludwig frowned. "Do not be so weak," he said; "it is not fitting. You look badly,—you have not slept well."
"I have not slept at all," Johann Leopold replied. "After our conversation of last evening, after your answer to my questions——"
"You wanted the truth," Ludwig interrupted him, "and I thought I owed it to you."