"Absolutely," Hans said to himself, quite forgetting his elevated rank, "she thinks me a mediæval specimen too;" and he added, aloud, "Assuredly, Fräulein Gerlinda, I occupy myself with art, and flatter myself that I have attained a degree of proficiency in it."
The young lady seemed to think such an occupation very derogatory. Fortunately, she recalled the fact that a certain Eberstein, in a certain century, had taken up with astrology, and that partly explained Herr Wehlau Wehlenberg's extraordinary tastes, but she nevertheless felt herself called upon to repeat to him a saying of her father's: "My papa says that a man of an ancient, noble line ought to make no concessions to the present; it is beneath his dignity."
"That is the Herr Baron's opinion," said Hans, with a shrug. "He seems to have been so entirely secluded from the world that he has lost all sympathy with it; others of his rank, however, feel very differently. Look, for example, at the Counts von Steinrück, whose family is just as old as yours."
"Two hundred years younger," Gerlinda interrupted him, indignantly.
"Quite right; full two hundred years. I remember their ancestors are first met with in the Crusades, while yours date from the eighth century."
"From the tenth."
"Certainly, from the tenth! It was a slip of the tongue; I meant, of course, from the tenth century. But to return to the Steinrücks: Count Michael is a general in command; his son was, I think, attached to our embassy in Paris; his grandson has some official position. They are all men of the present, and would hardly coincide with your father in opinion; and you, too, will differ from him when you have seen something of life and the world."
"I do not want to see anything of them," Gerlinda said, softly and timidly. "I am afraid of them."
Hans smiled; he drew a step nearer, and bent down towards the girl; his voice sounded sweet and tender, as if he were speaking to a child. "That is very natural; you live here in such seclusion, in a fairy world, long since faded from reality, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty in the fairy-tale. But some time the day will come when the hawthorn hedges will part asunder, and the green walls open, a day when you will awaken from your enchanted sleep; and believe me, Fräulein Gerlinda, your eyes will open then not upon the dust and mould of centuries, but upon the warm, golden sunshine that floods our present age, in spite of all its conflicts and trials. Ah, you will learn to love it all."
Gerlinda listened in silence, but a faint, happy smile playing about her lips betrayed her knowledge of the story of the Sleeping Beauty. She slowly raised her eyes, only for an instant, and dropped them hastily; that which shone upon her in the young man's gaze might perhaps be a ray of the light he had promised her; she suddenly flushed crimson and turned hastily away.