The Freiherr was silent for a while, and then said, "Have you any plan of travel?"
"Yes; I should like to join Werner and go to India with him."
The Freiherr turned short upon him again: "To India? In your condition the fatigue of the journey, the influence of the climate——"
"All better for me than staying here," Johann Leopold interrupted him, and his pale face flushed for an instant. After a pause he went on more calmly: "I have been corresponding with Dr. Werner about it. He made at first the same objections that you make; but he finally acknowledged that my morbid desire for just this journey is perhaps a true instinct,—a suggestion of nature."
The Freiherr breathed more freely. "There, you see,—a suggestion of nature. Then Dr. Werner thinks your recovery possible. And it is so; you must be well. Yes, my lad, go,—go as soon as you choose; and if I can be of any service to you, rely upon me."
"If you would have an eye upon Moorgarten and Elgerode I should be greatly obliged to you."
"Certainly I will; refer your people to me," said the Freiherr. "But I have one condition to make: we will explain that you are ill, and are to travel in search of health. What your illness is must remain our secret. If you come back well, it need never be known."
Johann Leopold passed his hand across his brow and eyes with his own peculiar gesture of weariness. "Magelone must be told."
"Least of all Magelone!" cried his grandfather. "If she cannot be spared it always—well, then she must endure it; but let her hope as long as she can. She deserves it at your hands. She loves you. I saw that plainly while you were ill."
The young man smiled bitterly again, arose, and went to the window. Before him lay the park, with its lindens of a hundred years, which had shaded his childish games; beyond it soared the mountain-peaks,—Eichberg, Klettberg, and Elbenhöhe,—with their magnificent forests and hunting-grounds, which he had been taught from infancy to regard as his inheritance, and for the care of which he felt himself responsible, as well as for the villagers nestling in the valley under the protection of the ancient castle of Dönninghausen.