A cry of joy escaped his lips; he overwhelmed his betrothed with passionate caresses. "My Maia! I knew it. You would not forsake me, even though all others forsook me. And now, come! we have no time to lose."
"Now? This very hour?" asked Maia, shuddering. "Am I to see my father no more?"
"Impossible! You would betray yourself! We must leave on the spot. The carriage is in waiting to carry us to the station, at the gate in the rear of the park; I have with me my papers and a sum of money. In the excitement prevailing to-day at Odensburg, our departure will not be noticed. I shall see to it that they find not a trace of us, until I can announce our union to your father."
Maia's eyes were fixedly riveted upon the speaker, but hers were no longer glad, innocent child-eyes; there was an expression in them that Oscar could not fathom.
"Not say farewell to my father?" repeated she, mechanically. "Not even that, when I am giving him up forever?"
"Not forever," said Wildenrod, soothingly. "Your father will be reconciled to us. I shall take upon myself alone all the blame and responsibility of this step. We shall come back."
"Not I!" said the young girl, softly. "I shall die of that life in a foreign land, of separation from my father, of that--that dreadful thing, which you will not name before me. Oh, your love will be my death!"
"Maia!" cried he, interrupting her in angry surprise, but she would not be diverted, and continued:
"Somehow, I have always known it. When you first entered our house, and I looked into your eyes for the first time, a sense of distress came over me, as though I were standing on the edge of a precipice and must fall down. And this sense of distress has come ever again, even in that hour when you told me that you loved me, even in the midst of the happiness of these last weeks. I did not want to know the meaning of it, have struggled against it and clung to my supposed happiness. Now you point me to the abyss, and I--I must plunge down."
"And still you are willing to go with me?" asked Oscar, slowly: it was as though breath failed him.