As yet, no word had been exchanged between them, and even now that they were quite alone, silence still reigned for a minute or two. It almost seemed as though each shrank from speaking the first word. After an interval of more than twenty years, the former friends stood face to face. In the old days they had been adolescents, fired with all the enthusiasm, replete with the vigour of youth; now they met as men who since that time had severally lived through half a generation--the one still in the prime of strength and manhood, with the tall commanding figure and proud bearing which bespeak the habit of authority, his thick dark hair showing no silver threads, his stern rigid countenance no mark of age--and, as a contrast, the other! Barely a year his companion's senior, and yet to all appearances an old man, with the grey head and stooping form of advanced years, and a face deeply lined with the furrows of care and suffering. In the eyes alone there sparkled a gleam of the old fire, the last lingering trace of a long-bygone time.
"Rudolph!" said the Baron, at length. His tone betrayed mighty, well-nigh uncontrollable emotion, and he moved forward as though he would have approached his old friend; but the latter drew back, and asked in an icy tone:
"What may your Excellency wish of me?"
Raven frowned. "Why such words between us? Will you not recognise me? I knew you at once, by your eyes. You are still the same man, though altered in much, in almost everything." His look travelled slowly over Brunnow's face and figure as he spoke. The other smiled a smile of intense bitterness.
"I have grown old before my time. A man does not wear well in exile, when each day is spent in battling with the petty cares and miseries of life. Baron von Raven has come better through the fight. Such pitiful grievances do not attain to the height on which your Excellency stands."
"Once more I beg of you to drop this tone, Rudolph," said the Baron, earnestly. "I know all that lies between us, and I have no thought of seeking a reconciliation which I feel to be impossible. We are foes now--so be it; but it is a paltry vengeance on your part to insist with such scornful emphasis on a title to which I attach as little importance as you yourself can do. However we may stand towards each other, to you I must still be Arno Raven. Call me by the name which has been familiar to you."
Brunnow stood silent, with a moody, downcast look.
"I can divine what has brought you hither," went on Raven; "but even such a motive hardly excuses the temerity of the step. You are fully aware of the risk you run on this side the border, and your son is out of danger."
"But yesterday I believed him to be on his deathbed. My own safety could not be thought of at such a time. I felt I must hasten to him at all hazards."
The Baron made no reply to this; perhaps he told himself that in a like case he would not have acted differently.