"Do you think I would go with him?" cried Elizabeth, indignantly, her cheeks aglow.
"And why not?—if you loved him."
"No, never," replied the girl in a suppressed voice, "not even if I loved him,—for I should then be all the more wretched in the consciousness that the prestige of my name had weighed heavier in the balance than my heart, that in the eyes of that man all aspiration after spiritual elevation and moral excellence was worthless in comparison with a phantom, which the miserable prejudices of men had tricked out with tinsel."
Frau Ferber gazed with surprise at her daughter, whose face showed evident signs of deep emotion. The forester, on the other hand, held his pipe firmly between his teeth, and clapped his hands loudly.
"Elsie, child of gold!" he cried at last, "give me your hand! that's my brave girl! true metal, through and through! Yes, I say, too, God keep me from swelling the number of those who give up an honest name for the sake of their own personal advantage. No, Adolph, we will not cast scorn upon the parish register of the little Silesian village where we were christened; we will go on writing our names as they are written there."
"And as they have faithfully clung to us in joy and sorrow for half a century," added Ferber with his quiet smile, "I will keep this document for this fellow," and he laid his hand upon little Ernst's curly head, "until his judgment is clear and ripe. I cannot and must not decide for him, but I trust I shall train him so that he will prefer to carve out a path for himself by his own energy, rather than to lie idly in the hot-bed of old traditions and wrongs enjoying privileges which should be the reward only of lofty endeavour. The Gnadewitzes in their long career added nothing to the world, but took much from it; let them moulder in their graves, and their high-sounding, undeserved titles with them!"
"Selah!" cried the forester, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "And now let us go," he said to his brother, "and advise with the Lindhof pastor. A spot beneath the beautiful lindens in our village church-yard seems to me infinitely preferable to those three gloomy walls, within which the mother of our line has lain for so long; and that the 'dark, cold ground' may not touch her coffin, let us have a grave built in the earth and closed with a tombstone."
He departed, accompanied by Ferber and Reinhard, and, whilst her mother and Miss Mertens were putting the jewel-box away in a place of security, Elizabeth climbed the ladder placed against the ruined jutty, pushed aside the boards, and descended into the secret chamber. A slender ray of the setting sun touched a ruby pane in the little window and threw a bloody stain upon the name "Lila," on the lid of the coffin. Elizabeth, with head bowed and hands clasped, stood for a long while beside the lonely bier, whereon that burning heart had slept undisturbed since the moment when death had stilled its wild beating and ended its sorrow. Centuries had flown by, effacing, as if they had never existed, all the transporting charm of that short life,—all the stormy emotion which had worked its ruin,—and yet the young heart that was throbbing restlessly in that chamber of death beside that bier, fancied that the emotions causing it to throb so wildly could never die.
CHAPTER XVII.
The news of the occurrence at Gnadeck had reached Lindhof Castle even before Reinhard returned thither. The masons on their way home to the village had related the wonderful story to a servant whom they met in the park, and the tale had flashed like lightning from mouth to mouth until it reached the boudoir of the ladies of the castle, where it produced the effect almost of a bombshell.