"The interior arrangements will all be complete before you arrive," he said. "The house itself was finished in the autumn, and the vicinity of the line of railway made it possible for me to superintend everything personally. You will soon feel at home among the mountains, Fräulein Nordheim."
"I know them already," said Alice, still trifling with her flowers. "We go to Heilborn regularly every summer."
"Merely a summer promenade, with the mountains for a background," Elmhorst said. "Those are not the mountains which you will learn to know in your new home; the situation is magnificent, and I flatter myself that you will be pleased with the home itself. It is indeed only a simple mountain-villa, but as such I was expressly ordered to construct it."
"Papa says it is a little masterpiece of architecture," Alice remarked, quietly.
Wolfgang smiled and, as if accidentally, moved his chair a little nearer: "I should be very glad to acquit myself well as an architect. It is not exactly my métier, but you were to occupy the villa, Fräulein Alice, and I could not leave it to other hands. I obtained permission from the president to build the little mountain-home, which he tells me he intends shall be your special property."
The significance of his words was sufficiently plain, as was also his intimation of her father's approval, but the young lady neither blushed nor seemed confused; she merely said, with her usual indifferent lassitude,--
"Yes, papa means the villa shall be a present to me; therefore he did not wish me to see it until it was entirely finished. It was very kind of you, Herr Elmhorst, to undertake its construction."
"Pray do not praise me," Wolfgang hastily interposed. "On the contrary, it was rank selfishness that caused me to thrust myself forward in the matter. Every architect asks to be paid, and the recompense for which I sue may well seem to you presumptuous. Nevertheless may I speak--may I ask of you what it has long been in my heart to entreat?"
Alice slowly raised her large brown eyes to his with an inquiring expression that was almost melancholy and that seemed fain to read the truth in the young man's resolute face. She read there eager expectation, but nothing more, and the questioning eyes were again veiled beneath their long lashes. She made no reply.
Wolfgang seemed to consider her silence as an encouragement; he arose and approached her chair, as he went on: "My request is a bold one, I know it, but 'Fortune favours the bold.' So I told the Herr President when I first besought of him the honour of an introduction to you. It has always been my motto, and I cling to it to-day. Will you listen to me, Alice?"