"Hartmann!"
Ulric, who had already one foot on the plank, turned round at this address.
"I should have sent for you before this, if I had not feared my doing so might be wrongly interpreted. As we have met, I should like to speak to you."
A gleam of triumph shot over the other's face; but it passed quickly, and his features re-assumed the reserved look which was habitual to them.
"Here in the meadow?"
"The place does not signify; we are alone here."
Ulric approached slowly, and placed himself opposite his employer, who was leaning against one of the willows which bordered the water-course. The evening mists were beginning to rise, and yonder over the forest, where the sun had lately set, the whole sky was suffused with a deep crimson after-glow.
They were a strange contrast, these two. The slender, almost delicate figure of the high-bred man with his pale face in complete repose, his dark earnest eyes, whence that light had now vanished which gave to them at times so inexplicable a charm, and the giant frame of the miner, carrying his fair curly head so proudly, whose gaze, full of fire and a sort of savage satisfaction, never swerved from his adversary's pale countenance. The instinct of jealousy taught him to see and mark that which was observed by no one else, and, if all the world maintained that Arthur Berkow had passed by his beautiful wife unmoved, that he had never felt the slightest interest in her, Ulric knew well that no man could remain indifferent who called such a woman as Eugénie Windeg his own, knew too all that the loss of such a woman implied, since that morning when he had stood under the pines, watching her carriage as it rolled away.
But, through all the pain of the separation, there rang a note of triumph. A wife who loves her husband does not leave him at a time when all around him is reeling and falling, yet she had gone, gone to the safe protection of her father and brothers, and left him alone exposed to all and everything. That must have struck home to him, to this proud Berkow, whom neither hatred nor menace, neither fear of violence or revolt, or even of ruin itself, could touch, and though he should succeed in deceiving all about him with that calm brow of his, yet he could not deceive his enemy. That blow had surely gone to his heart.
"I need not tell you now of all that has occurred of late," began Arthur; "you must be as well acquainted with it as I am, perhaps even better. The other works have followed your example; we are entering upon a lengthened conflict. Can you answer for your comrades?"