"Clear the Track!" A Story of To-day

by E. Werner

The Count seemed to have expected some other sign of encouragement, for his voice acquired a touch of bitterness, as he continued:

"It has been hard enough for me to approach any other with my entreaties and desires, even although it was your father. But your manner to me has always been so distant, allowing me room for so little hope, that I did not dare to address to you first the question, on which the happiness of my life depends. I feel only too sensitively that here I needed an intercessor."

"I would not willingly hurt you feelings, Victor, certainly not," Maia assured him, and with her old childlike cordiality she held out her hand to him, which he firmly clasped in his own.

"You have given me pain enough by that constantly kept-up cold reserve of yours," said he, reproachfully. "Oh! from the hour when I found that little elf in the cottage in the woods, from the moment when the sweet little face of my former playmate emerged from the gray hood that had concealed it, I knew where centered the happiness of my life. May I speak now, at last? Maia, I love you beyond everything; I cannot live without you!"

These were no glowing, impassioned words of love, such as the young girl had once listened to from the lips of another, but they expressed warm, fervent devotion, and Maia would have been no true woman had she remained indifferent, in presence of this constant, true love.

"You will have it so--then take me?" said she in a low tone. "I have cared for you since we were children."

With an exclamation of joy, Victor clasped her to his heart, to the admiration of Puck, who stared at them both, and evidently could not exactly understand the situation.

The engagement, which, was now announced to her father, as may well be understood, so engrossed the minds of all the inmates of the Manor-house, that they no longer thought of keeping a lookout for the carriage, that could now be espied making its way along the wooded heights. The road led for some distance over this plateau, ere it dipped into the valley. There, in the midst of green, fir-clad hills, was situated that mighty hive of industry, Odensburg. The rolling-mills had long since arisen from their ashes, more capacious in extent than before, and new establishments of a different kind had been associated with them, for there was no standstill in the Dernburg works, and they expanded with every year.

The bride, in a simple, gray traveling-suit, leaned out of the open carriage, eager to catch a glimpse of the Manor-house, now visible behind the trees of the park. Cecilia had always been a beautiful girl, but the woman was, if possible, more beautiful, in the full development of that peculiar charm, which had, at all times, won her affection. There could, indeed, be no greater contrast than was presented by this refined, still rather foreigner-like being and the husband who sat by her side. This was the same old Egbert Runeck, so far as his somewhat rough, forceful personality was concerned, impressing one as ready to defy the whole world and fight the battle through. Only the gray eyes beneath that broad, massive brow had a different expression from what they had had before; they diffused a warm, bright radiance, and it was not hard to guess whence this light emanated.

"There lies our home, Cecilia!" said Runeck, while he pointed down into the valley. "You, indeed, have never liked Odensburg--will you be able, think you, to endure permanent residence there?"