"Well, go then!" growled the old doctor. "I can get nothing out of you; but let the professor only come home, and I will set his head right."
The young physician smiled incredulously. "Well, try it!" he said. "I have done my utmost; but that sickly melancholy is beyond my power."
He went, leaving Doctor Stephen very much out of sorts. All his joy in the festal preparations was over, and he said to himself that if the professor really came, he would be hardly in the mood to do justice to the reception prepared for him. All delight in the anticipated surprise was over. Since Frederic's death, everything had gone wrong.
The death of their nephew had come very near to the doctor and his wife. It had been a bitter day for them when the young man who bad gone from them as a servant, was brought home in his coffin, as their nearest relative. The sting which ceaselessly tormented Jane, and would allow her no peace, had also its smart for them, when they thought how the sister's child, so long and so anxiously sought, for whose recovery thousands had been sacrificed in vain, had lived as a menial in their own house, without enjoying the slightest share of the wealth and the affection that should have been his. And yet, the poor fellow had been so grateful for the little they had given him out of mere kindness! His honest, sincere parting words rang continually in their ears! "You have been very good to me during these three years; if I come back, I will richly repay you; if not--may God reward you!"
In Frederic Erdmann, the servant Professor Fernow had brought with him to B., who would have recognized the lost Fritz Forster? The name his foster-parents had given him had prevented the discovery, and a second change of name had been still more unfortunate for him. If his sister had come back to her relatives as Johanna Forster, it might have led her brother, who knew that his family had gone to America, to a remembrance, to a declaration, which would have thrown light upon all; the foreign name of Jane Forest had made this impossible, and the subordinate position of Frederic had done the rest. The servant naturally had made no inquiries as to her history or her former name; and Professor Fernow, who knew both, in his hermit-like seclusion, kept himself too remote from the doctor to be made the confidant of his family affairs, and of the researches Jane was making. Indeed Jane, having Atkins at her side, kept these researches as much as possible from her uncle. The chance solution of the whole mystery, which might have occurred at any moment, did not come, and the decisive word had been spoken only in the hour of death. Perhaps all this had been more than mere chance; it was not to be. Of all this wealth, nothing was to fall to Forest's heir but the splendid monument over his grave, and it was of no avail to Frederic when young Erdmann wrote in answer to the letter addressed to him, removing the last possible doubt, and confirming word for word all that had been already learned. The dead received the name justly his due; but it was too late for aught else.
The relations between Jane and her relatives were, if possible, colder than ever, and she did not make the slightest effort to increase their warmth. When, accompanied by Atkins and Alison, she had come with her brother's corpse to B., she had been most kindly and sympathetically received by her uncle and aunt; but she gave this kindness no return. She secluded herself with her sorrow more obstinately than before with her pride, she bore her grief as she was wont to bear all else, alone and silently. The doctor and his wife could not comprehend a sorrow inaccessible to consolation or sympathy, and were more than ever confirmed in their belief in Jane's heartlessness. In fact, hers was too self-reliant, energetic a nature, to change in a day, or become untrue to its proper character. In the moment of her deepest agony, she had shown her dying brother that she really possessed a heart; but she showed this to none else, and the words Doctor Behrend had spoken of Walter, applied also to her. Her future, too, depended upon a power outside herself; and the few next days would decide whether she would return to the old hardness and reticence, or gradually become that being which one only recognized in her; assert that true nature against which she had fought so long, and which had first asserted itself at the hour of her brother's death.
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
The Balance of Power.
Atkins had taken up his abode in B. for the winter; but Alison had left a few days after Frederic's burial. He must have felt that his presence was not comforting to Jane; so he resumed his original plan of travel. He had passed the autumn and winter in a tour through Switzerland and Italy, and now, in the spring, when he had visited the larger cities of Germany, he was about to return to B. The doctor and his wife even now knew nothing of his relations to their niece. Jane had never alluded to the subject. They only knew that the year of her stay in Germany having expired, and its purpose having been accomplished, she was soon to return to America; that the first of the next month had been fixed upon as the time of her departure. It was delegated to Atkins to inform the relatives that Jane would return as Mrs. Alison, and that it was thought best the marriage ceremony should be performed here in the house of her uncle. The great respect and deference they had always shown the young lady's wealth, now found its reward; they were treated as if really inferiors, not being informed of this most intimate of family relations, until their aid was needed in arranging the necessary preliminaries for the marriage decided upon so long ago.