CHAPTER IV.
"I wish, Eleonore, we had stayed in the Villa Fiorina, and not undertaken our migration here," said Consul Erlau, as he stood still before his adopted daughter, whom he had surprised in tears on his unlooked-for entrance into her room. "I see I have made you suffer far too much by it."
Ella had soon effaced the traces of weeping, and now smiled with a calmness which might well have deceived a stranger.
"Pray, uncle, do not be anxious on my account! We are here for your sake, and we will thank God if your recovery, which has begun so promisingly in the south, is completed here."
"Still I wish that Dr. Conti were at any other place in the world," replied the Consul, annoyed, "only not just in the town which we would avoid at all cost, and where I am obliged to put myself under his treatment. Poor child, I knew you were making a sacrifice for me in this journey; how great it is I only now am learning to see."
"It is no sacrifice, at least no longer now," said Ella, firmly. "I only dreaded the possibility of a first meeting. Now this is overcome, and all the rest with it."
Erlau examined her features enquiringly, and somewhat suspiciously. "Indeed! then why have you wept?"
"Uncle, one cannot always control one's mood. I was cast down just now."
"Eleonore!" The Consul seated himself beside her, and took her hand in his. "You know I have never been able to overcome the thought that this unhappy connection commenced in my house, and my only satisfaction was that this house could afford you a home afterwards. I hoped that now, when years lie between, when everything in and around you has so completely changed, the injury you once received would pain you no longer; and instead I must see that it continues to burn undiminished and unforgotten--that the old wounds are torn open afresh, that you--"
"You are mistaken," interrupted Ella, hastily, "you are quite mistaken, I--have long made an end of the past."