This was what Jane had expected. She wanted no water, but she needed a moment of solitude to save her from suffocation. Scarce was he gone, when she, too, hastened to the door, drew the bolt, and then sinking on her knees by the sofa, she buried her face in her hands. Jane Forest would not yield in this way before stranger eyes!
"If one is thrust out into life, without parents and without home, and then falls into the hands of a learned man who knows and loves nothing in the wide world but science--" and that letter came from the Rhine! This had been the lightning stroke which had passed through her; the presentiment came with all the annihilating power of certainty. That lightning flash had opened an abyss before her, into which Jane did not dare to glance; it had brought a secret to light, of which the cold, proud betrothed of Alison had not before been conscious. But, as now in mortal anguish she wrung her uplifted hands, it broke forth in one long-repressed despairing-cry;--
"Almighty God, only not this! My rival, my deadly enemy, if it must be, I will bear it--only not my brother!"
[CHAPTER XVII.]
The Pen and the Sword.
The late afternoon sun of a bright September day shone through the thick-leaved boughs of the ancient gigantic chestnuts which shaded the avenues and grass-plats of the broad park stretching behind the castle of S., one of those magnificently situated country seats in which the interior of France is so rich. This castle, on the western declivity of a precipitous range of hills, which at this point unfolded all their widely-romantic beauty, as well as the village in its immediate vicinity, had just been seized as quarters for the soldiery. A Rhenish landwehr regiment, after having taken part in all the August battles had been ordered back here to protect the mountain region from roving bands of French fusileers, and to keep the passes free. It was a dangerous and arduous post for the rather small detachment, which, many miles distant from its comrades, almost daily undertook excursions to the mountains, thereby placing itself in constant danger of an attack for which this region was only too favorable. The soldiery lay in the village, while the officers had quartered themselves close by in the castle, whose inmates had naturally fled. These gentlemen, for the moment at least, seemed to have surrendered themselves to an idleness of late only rarely offered them; from the terrace echoed loud talking and laughing, blended with the ringing of glasses.
At the entrance of the park, under one of these giant chestnuts, lay a landwehr officer stretched upon the tall grass, and gazing up into the thick leafy roof through which the setting sun threw hither and thither its palpitating rays. The floral treasures of the garden, arranged with great art and care, and now resplendent with all the summer's magnificence and luxuriance, appeared to fetter his attention just as little as the sound of his comrades' merriment coming down to him from the castle. He raised his head only when an approaching footstep startled him from his dream.
A man of about thirty years, his uniform and the bands upon his arm designating him as a surgeon, came up the path as if in search of some one, and halted before the reclining officer.
"I thought as much! Here you lie dreaming again, while I, by the sweat of my brow, am winning popularity for you. You really do not concern yourself about it in the least!"
The man addressed half rose and supported himself on his elbows. "I have a duty to perform," he said. "I must go down to the village at four o'clock."