He drew his friend down on the sofa beside him and began to ask questions and narrate his own experiences. He had the conversation almost entirely to himself however. Runeck showed himself strikingly taciturn and absent-minded, and meanwhile he answered mechanically as it were, as though he had his mind bent on very different things. Not until Eric began to speak of his approaching marriage did he grow more attentive.
"We want to set off on our trip immediately after the grand entertainment to be held on our wedding-day," said the latter with a happy smile. "I think of spending a few weeks, with my young wife in Switzerland, but then we shall both wing our flight to the South. To the South! You have no idea what a charm that word has for us. This cold Northern sky, these gloomy fir-clad mountains, all the bustle and stir here, all this lies so heavy upon me. I cannot get perfectly well here. Hagenbach, who just left me, thinks so too and proposes that we spend the whole winter in Italy. Alas! father, though, will not hear of this--it will cost us a battle to carry our point with him."
"Are you feeling worse again?" asked Egbert, whose eyes rested with a peculiarly searching expression upon the pale, sunken features of his friend.
"Oh, nothing to signify," said Eric, carelessly. "The doctor is only so incredibly anxious. He has prohibited my riding, gives me all manner of prescriptions, and now wants the wedding-festivities to be on a reduced scale, because they might cause me to over-exert myself. Anything but excitement. That is the first and last word with him. I am getting rather tired of this thing, for he treats me always like a very ill patient to whom any excitement might bring death."
Runeck's gaze was fixed yet more intently and gravely upon the young man, and there was restrained emotion in his features and his voice, when he asked:
"So Dr. Hagenbach dreads excitement for you, does he? To be sure, you did have a hemorrhage that time----"
"Dear me, Egbert! that was two years ago, and every trace of it has disappeared," interrupted Eric impatiently. "The only thing is, Odensburg does not agree with me, any more than it does with Cecile, who can never feel at home here. She is made for joy and sunshine, that is the element in which, alone, she can thrive; here, where all hinges upon labor and duty, where my father's stern eyes hold her spellbound, as it were, she cannot be herself. If you knew what a change has been wrought in my Cecile, who sparkled with life and exuberant spirits, who was so captivating even in her caprices! How pale and quiet she has grown in these last weeks, how strangely altered in her whole nature. Many a time I am afraid that something quite different lies at the bottom of it. If she repents of having plighted her troth to me, if--ah, I see specters everywhere!"
"But, Eric, I beseech you," remarked Runeck soothingly. "Is this the way you follow the prescription of the doctor? You are stirring yourself up in a manner wholly unnecessary."
"No, no!" cried the young man passionately. "I see and feel that Cecile is concealing something from me--day before yesterday she betrayed herself. I spoke of our wedding-trip,--of Italy, when she suddenly burst out with: 'Yes, let us be gone, Eric, wherever you will, only far, far away from this place! I can stand it no longer!' What cannot she stand? She would not let me question her on the subject, but it sounded like a shriek of despair."
Carried out of himself he sprang to his feet. Egbert, too, got up, managing as he did so, accidentally as it were, to step out of the bright sunshine, that poured in through the window, into the shade. "Do you love your betrothed much?" asked he slowly with marked emphasis.