"Later on!" answered Reinhold, recovering himself. "In about an hour. You will stay some time?"
Hugo overlooked the last question. He stood opposite his brother, and gazed searchingly at him.
"Has there been a scene again?" he asked half-aloud.
The moody defiance, which had disappeared for a few moments from the young man's face, returned.
"To be sure. They have attempted once more to treat me like a schoolboy, who, when he has accomplished his daily appointed task, is to be watched, and made to render an account of every step he takes, even in his hours of recreation. I have made it clear to them that I am tired of their everlasting guardianship."
The Captain did not ask what step the quarrel was about; the short conversation with Jonas seemed to have explained all that sufficiently; he only said, shaking his head--"It is unfortunate that you are so completely dependent upon our uncle. If later on it end in a regular rupture between you, and you leave the business, it would become a question of existence for you--your income goes entirely with it. You, yourself, might trust wholly to your compositions, but to think they could support a family yet would be making your future very uncertain from the beginning. I had only myself to act for; you will be compelled to wait until a greater work places you in the position of being able to turn your back, with your wife and child, upon all the envy of a small provincial town."
"Impossible!" cried Reinhold almost madly. "By that time I shall have foundered ten times over, and what talent I possess with me. Endure, wait, perhaps for years? I cannot do it, it is the same thing to me as suicide. My new work is completed. If only in some degree it attain the success of the first, it would enable me to live at least a few months in Italy."
Hugo was staggered.
CHAPTER V.
"You are going to Italy? Why there particularly?" asked the Captain.