"Do not turn from me, Ella, as from a criminal!" said he, with returning gentleness. "I am going, perhaps never to return, and the hour of my confession is also that of my farewell. I might, indeed, have spared you it, should not have made your heart heavy too with what oppresses mine. God knows I had the honest intention of being silent, and bear it until I had departed; but after all, one is but mortal, and when you begged me to remain, and looked so kindly at me, there was an end of my self-control. Reinhold himself prophesied that I should some day meet those eyes which would put a stop to all scoffing, all thoughtlessness. The only misfortune was, that I must find them in his wife. If this were not so, I had better have bid adieu to all freedom and independence for these eyes' sake, have become a quiet, steady married man, and have denied my whole nature; but it would have been a pity for old Hugo Almbach after all--therefore, probably Heaven raised an obstacle, and said 'No.'"
CHAPTER IX.
Captain Almbach tried in vain to speak in his old scoffing way; to-day it would not come to his aid. His lips quivered, and his words sounded like the bitterest irony. Ella saw how deeply the wound had eaten into the man whom in this respect she had considered invulnerable.
"You should have gone long since, Hugo," said she, in gentle reproach, "now it is too late to spare you the pain; but if a sister's love--"
"For God's sake, refrain from that," interrupted he impetuously. "Only none of that respect, friendship, and all the fine things with which ideal people console themselves in like cases, and which kill an ordinary man, when his throbbing heart is expected to satisfy itself with them. I know, indeed, that you have always looked upon me as a brother, that your heart has always and ever clung to Reinhold, even then, when he betrayed and forsook you; but I cannot bear to hear it now from your lips. Of course it serves me right. Why did I become untrue to her, my beautiful blue bride of the ocean, to whom now only I belong? She makes me atone for ever having thought of forsaking her for another, and yet it always seemed to me as if I gazed into her blue depths when I looked into Ella's eyes." He threw his head back with a half-defiant motion. "And to me those, eyes unveiled themselves first, then, when my brother never suspected what riches he called his own. I knew better than he what the woman was whom he gave up for a Biancona's sake, and in despite of that he bears away the prize for which I could have given everything. Such demon-like, artistic natures always conquer one of us who have nothing to oppose excepting a warm heart and ardent, bounteous love. Reinhold takes back what never, even for a moment, ceased to be his own property, and I--go; so we are all provided for."
An immeasurable bitterness lay in these words, which betrayed only too well that his love for his brother could no longer resist a passion which appeared to have changed Hugo's entire nature. He made a movement as if to leave the room. Ella held him back.
"No, Hugo, you shall not go thus," said she, firmly. "Not with this bitterness against Reinhold and me in your heart. Our happiness has already had to be rebuilt on the ruins of a stranger's life; it would be too dearly paid for if it were to cost us our brother also. We should never, never get over it if we knew you were unhappy far away--unhappy through us."
She had raised her eyes to him beseechingly and sadly. Captain Almbach looked down upon the young wife with a singular mixture of anger and tenderness.
"Do not trouble about me," replied he, with emotion, "I do not belong to those men who at once yield themselves up to despair because they must tear themselves away from that on which their whole heart now hangs, and if in the wrench, a piece of the heart goes too, well, he can bear it still as it is. I shall bear it; whether I shall overcome it is a different question. When Reinhold is quite recovered again, tell him what has driven me away from being near him and you. I do not wish to stand before my brother as a hypocrite, and I should have confessed it to him myself long since, only that I still dreaded the excitement for him of such an acknowledgment; he has become only much too irritable on every point which concerns you. Tell him that Hugo could not stay--not one hour longer--and that he had given you his word not to return again until he could appear before his brother's wife as he ought."
The hand, which was extended to her in farewell, grasped hers with a convulsive pressure, when the door opened, and little Reinhold rushed in, flying to his uncle with childish eagerness--