"Did you not heed the warning that I gave you?" asked Ferber.
"Certainly I did; I put her into another room; she sleeps now just above me, so that I can hear her lightest step. At night both the house doors are not only bolted, as they have always been at night, but locked too, and I take the key into my room. And oh! the cunning of women,—but that's an old story. At any rate my precautions ensured us some rest. But last night I could not get to sleep; the affair with Linke was running through my brain, and I heard steps above me, cautious steps, soft as a cat's. Aha! I thought, she is at her nightly promenades again, and I rose, but when I went up-stairs the nest was already empty. On a table at the open window a light was burning, and as I opened the door the curtain flew into the flame. Zounds! if I had not been quick as a flash we should have had a blaze that would have been well fed by those old balconies. And how did she get out? Through the kitchen window. I would rather take care of a swarm of ants than of such a sly, deceitful creature."
"I am convinced that some love affair is at the bottom of the girl's conduct," said Frau Ferber.
"Yes, you told me so once before, sister-in-law," replied the forester with irritation, "and if you would be kind enough to tell me with whom, I should be infinitely obliged to you. Look around us and see if there is any one here to turn a girl's brain. My assistants,—they are not half good enough for her; she never would have a word to say to them; it cannot be the rogue Linke, with his crooked legs and carroty wig, and there is no one else here."
"You have forgotten one," said Frau Ferber significantly, with a glance towards Elizabeth, who had lingered behind to cut a whip for Ernst.
"Well?" asked the forester.
"Herr von Hollfeld."
The forester remained silent for awhile. "Hm!" he muttered at last, "I should never in the world have thought of him. No, no," he continued quickly, "I do not believe it, for in the first place the girl cannot possibly be such a fool as to believe that he would make her my lady von Odenberg, and——"
"Perhaps she hoped that he would, and finds herself mistaken," interrupted Frau Ferber.
"She is vain and arrogant enough for it, but he,—he cares nothing for women,—he is a cold, heartless egotist," said the forester.