"Nothing. When do you intend leaving?"
"I do not know," answered Reinhold, more and more struck. "In a few days--or weeks--there is no hurry."
"I will inform my parents. Good-night." She turned to go. He made a hasty step after her as if to detain her. Ella remained.
"You have misunderstood me."
The young wife drew herself up firmly and proudly. She appeared all at once to have become a different person. This tone and carriage, Ella Almbach had never known.
"The 'fetters' shall not press upon you any longer, Reinhold. You can attain your object unhindered, and your--prize. Good-night."
She opened the door quickly and went out. The moonlight fell brightly on the slight figure in the darkness, upon the sad pale face and the blond plaits. In the next moment she had disappeared. Reinhold stood alone.
"This house is miserable now," said the old bookkeeper in the office, as he put his pen behind his ear, and closed the account book. "The young master away for three days without giving any signs of his being alive, without enquiring for wife or child. The Herr Captain does not set his foot across the threshold; the principal goes about in such a rage that one hardly dares to go near him; and young Frau Almbach looks so wretched that one's heart aches to see her. Heaven knows how this unhappy story will end."
"But how, then, did this disturbance come so suddenly?" asked the head clerk, who also--it was the hour for closing the office--put his writing aside and shut his desk.