"Has not Fels been to see you while I have been away?" he asked anxiously. The little lady's aspect evidently caused him great alarm.
"No. I gave express orders that he should not be sent for. I am taking the drops that he prescribed for my nervous attacks, and he can do nothing more for me. Don't be concerned, Rudolph, I shall be better soon. You have had a sad time at Thalleben?"
"Yes," he answered, but his eyes still rested anxiously upon his sister's altered features. "Poor Hartwig died before I arrived; he suffered fearfully. He was buried yesterday afternoon. You would scarcely know his unfortunate wife, Helene; this blow has added twenty years to her life!"
He imparted to her some further particulars concerning the sad event, and then passed his hand across his eyes, as though desirous of banishing from his mind all the trouble and sorrow that he had witnessed during the last few days.
"Well, and is all going on here as usual?" he asked after a short pause.
"Not quite," Helene replied with some hesitation. "Möhring left us yesterday."
"Ah, Heaven speed him! I am glad that I escaped a final interview with him. Well, I have one more enemy in the world, but I cannot help it; he belongs to a class of men whom I despise."
"And at Gnadeck a piece of good fortune has befallen the Ferbers," Helene continued in an unnaturally quiet voice, averting her face.
The arm-chair in which she was sitting was suddenly pushed aside by the arm upon which her brother had been leaning. She did not look up, and therefore could not see the livid pallor that overspread his face for a moment, while his quivering lips essayed twice to frame the simple monosyllable "Well?"
Helene related the story of the ruins, to which her brother listened breathlessly. Every word that she spoke seemed to lift a weight from his heart, but he never dreamed how it cut into the very soul of the narrator like a two-edged sword, and that all this was only the prelude to her announcement of the terrible sacrifice that she was about to make.