"But to return to the real matter in hand. The pocket-handkerchief"----
"How should I know where the thing is?" interrupted Ulric, roughly. "It is lost, or Martha may have given it back. How should I know!"
Wilberg was just going to launch out into indignation at the indifference with which an object, in his eyes of such priceless worth, was treated, when he suddenly perceived Martha standing before her uncle's house. He shot down on her like a hawk, and began to question her as to where the said handkerchief might be hidden, whether she had really given it back, or whether, within the range of possibility, it might yet be found.
The girl seemed not quite to understand him at first; when she found out what it was all about her face darkened perceptibly.
"The handkerchief is there still," she said, decidedly. "I thought to do well one day when I took it out and washed the stains from it, but Ulric raved like a madman, because I had even touched the thing. He has got it in his chest."
"Oh! so it was only a pretext for refusing me?" said Wilberg, with a reproachful look at Ulric, who had listened with suppressed anger, and who answered almost with a sneer:
"Make up your mind to it, Herr Wilberg, the handkerchief is not for you."
"And why not, may I ask?"
"Because I mean to keep it," said Ulric, laconically.
"But, Hartmann"----