"That nobody knows as yet. He will certainly communicate with you after a while; you stand as high as ever in the affections of your father-in-law. He knows that not the slightest reproach attaches to you."
"The question here is not about myself, is it?" cried the young woman, vehemently. "Do you think that I can live quietly here at Odensburg, with my brother a wanderer upon the face of the earth, once more a prey to those inimical forces that have already brought him so low? You have done your duty--yes, thoroughly well! What asks a stern nature like yours, about whom and what has been crushed in the process?"
"Cecilia!" interposed Runeck, his tone betraying the torture he endured while listening to these reproaches. But Cecilia paid no heed and continued with increasing bitterness:
"Maia's hand and love would have saved Oscar, that I do know, for there was in him as mighty a power for good as for evil. Now he has been hurled back into the old life; now he is lost."
"Through me--is that what you would say?"
She did not answer, but the reproachful glance that she cast upon the young engineer was bitter in the extreme. Proudly but sadly he stood before her.
"You are right," said he, harshly. "Destiny has certainly condemned me to bring woe and misery upon all that I hold dear. I had to wound in the cruelest manner the man who had been more than a father to me. I had likewise to inflict no less a blow upon poor little Maia's heart. But the hardest of all was what I had to do to you, Cecilia, and for which you now condemn me!"
He waited in vain for a reply. Cecilia persisted in her silence. There was a rushing and roaring around the pair, as at that time when they stood at the foot of the Whitestone. Mysteriously came this roaring as from a far distance; on, on it came, ever swelling stronger and then sinking and dying away with the breath of the wind. But now the autumn storm howled furiously among the trees, half-bare of foliage as they were; the first gray shadows of evening began to steal upward, and what mingled with that rushing and roaring was not the peaceful Sabbath bells as before, but strange and dismal noises. A far-off and confused murmur it was, too undecided to determine what it was, for again and again it was swallowed up by the storm. But now the wind lulled for a few minutes, when it came across more loudly and distinctly. Cecilia drew herself up and listened intently. "What was that? Did it come from the house?"
"No, it seemed to come from the works," declared Runeck. "I heard it a while ago."
Both now listened, with bated breath, and suddenly Egbert exclaimed, with a start: