"Pastor Hartwig!"
A deep, momentous pause! The flames darted yet higher and threw their quivering light upon a deathly-pale, deathly-cold face; not a syllable came from her lips; she remained motionless in her place.
"Miss Forest, what does all this mean?" Walter's voice was low and anxious. "Why these strange questions? Did you know my foster-father? Were you in any way connected with him?"
At these last words, he had stepped nearer, and now stood close to her; Jane seemed not to have heard the question; she gave no answer.
"Johanna!"
A light shudder passed over her. This name! Only once before had she heard it from his lips, in that parting-hour, and it sounded like a melody out of the sweet, faraway days of her childhood. Her mother had once called her so, but only for a short space; the German name of his child had fallen a sacrifice to the rigid will of her father; it had been changed to the English, "Jane." Never since then, had she heard it again, and now as it came from his lips, it had such a soft, entreating tone--all her strength gave way before this one word.
Slowly she lifted her glance to him; it met his eyes, and for a moment, rested in them. Those blue eyes that with mournful tenderness hung upon her face--even now they exerted their mysterious power, a power which, at this moment, when all doubt must be solved, when the inevitable decision must be made, forced this proud, obstinate woman to forget the desire which had so long haunted her, to forget the momentous decision, which wrested her from all the conflict and torture of the few past hours, and with irresistible might, impelled her on into the dream he himself was dreaming at this moment.
She sat again by the willow-hedge where the first green buds of spring were opening, and he stood at her side. All around them brooded the fog, weaving its gray veil over tree and shrub; the rain-drops fell lightly upon the thirsty sod, strange whisperings and echoes thrilled the air, while above all, fell upon their ears the undulating murmurs of the distant Rhine. The present and the real dissolved in nothingness; she knew nothing, felt nothing, but that dumb, inexplicable anguish she had there experienced. She was willessly, powerlessly under the spell of these eyes.
They both started with a sudden tremor, affrighted at the same moment, by an unknown something.
The dream-picture dissolved with its swaying mists and its soft, tender reminiscences of the spring; they were again in that lofty, gloomy apartment of the gray stone castle; inside the fire blazed and crackled, outside, the autumn wind murmured through the trees; perhaps it was the wind that drove a bough against the window, and recalled them from this dream of remembrance. Jane was first to glance out in that direction, and Walter's eyes followed hers.