"I must now entreat the explanation, and yet, I do not know whether Miss Forest will be inclined to give it. When we met for the last time, on that day of my return from L. with Frederic's corpse, Mr. Alison stood between us, and held your hand in his, firmly, as if by this one act he would assert his right to all the world, He need not have thought it necessary to deprive us in so decided a manner of all opportunity to be alone; the moment forbade any word but of sorrow for the dead; we both alike lost much in him."
Gently but excitedly Jane shook her head. "You lost only a servant, Professor Fernow," she said. "The lot of my brother was one of cruel servitude from his earliest youth, and destiny would have been still more cruel to him had he not found in you a good master. I--did not make things easier for him while it lay in my power, and later, I could give him nothing--nothing but the cold marble above his grave!"
Walter now stood close to her; gently he took her trembling right hand in his. "And the last embrace of a sister!" he said softly.
Jane's lips quivered in bitterest sorrow. "He paid dearly enough for it," she said; "he had to buy it with his life-blood. If I had not been near him in that hour he might have come back healthy and merry with the others; my rescue was his destruction. I bring only sorrow to all that love me; I had to give death to my brother; I had to make Henry wretched--keep far from me, Professor Fernow, I can give you no happiness!"
With a convulsive movement she stepped to the edge of the balustrade, and with averted face gazed out into the distance. Frederic's death still threw its shadow over her life; the shadow would not lift, she could not overcome her remorseful sorrow. Something of the old hardness and bitterness again lay upon her features, and the anguish which thrilled through them and would scarce yield to control, only too well betrayed how serious she had been in those gloomy words before which at this moment, all hope, every dream of the future, sank into nothingness.
"Johanna!"
It was again that tone which once before in S. had wrought so mightily upon her heart, lifting it above all sorrow and all conflict; it compelled her now to turn round, to glance up to him; and when she met his eyes, hardness and bitterness could no longer hold their ground before these blue depths which once more spoke to her in that language of dreamy tenderness now as then holding her spell-bound.
"You have also caused me sorrow, Johanna, fearful sorrow; it was upon that autumn night when I implored you to make yourself free, and was ready the dare the utmost to win you. At that time, you flung back at me, this hard, 'Never! Even if Alison should release me and every other barrier should fall, NEVER, Walter!' Those words have ever since stood threateningly between us both; they have intimidated me up to this moment. Will you now at last, solve for me the riddle?"
Jane bowed her head. For some moments she was silent, then she said in a hollow voice: "I had found a clue to my brother, I knew that he had been reared by pastor Hartwig, and I heard the name from your lips as that of your foster-father."
"For God's sake, you did not believe--?"