"He will not do that," said Agnes, but there was a little secret uneasiness in her tone.
"Unfortunately I have cause to dread such a catastrophe. As for Fräulein von Harder, she will, I fear, not survive his death. The grief and anguish to which she will be exposed will kill her."
"Can people really die of grief?" asked the girl, who by this time had grown visibly anxious.
"I have seen several such cases in the course of my practice," declared the unscrupulous doctor, falsely; "and I have no doubt that a fresh one will now be added to the list. The Baroness and Herr von Raven will repent of their harshness when it is too late, and you too, Fräulein, you will regret the decision you have now taken, for it lay in your power to preserve two breaking hearts from despair."
Agnes listened with deep commiseration, but also with ever-increasing amazement. She had not believed the doctor possessed so much feeling. That gentleman now fairly launched into a strain of touching pathos, and seeing, not a little to his own surprise, the distinguished success it met with, had recourse to a bold stroke for his final effect. The suicide and the death from affliction, neither of which were at present even in contemplation, he unhesitatingly adopted in his argument as accomplished facts.
"And I must live to see this cruel consummation!" he said, with profound melancholy. "I, who had hoped to lead my friend and his bride to the altar!"
"You would hardly have done that, I think, in any case," put in the young lady. "You told me yourself that you never went to church."
"I will in future, if only this misfortune may be averted," declared Max. "Besides, weddings are exceptions."
Fräulein Agnes pricked up her ears at the first part of this speech. She was far too zealous in the work of conversion not at once to grasp the opportunity thus offered her.
"Do you mean that seriously?" she asked hastily. "Will you really go to church?"