"And I did not venture to ask for you; I did not know whether you would like to have me claim acquaintance with you."
"Could you entertain such a doubt?"
There was reproach in her tone, but Reinsfeld evidently was not depressed by it, and he looked at the girl with sparkling eyes. He could see how much more beautiful, how much graver, she had become, but she was the same to him as of old, nor did he in her presence feel any of the timidity and embarrassment which had made him so awkward on the previous day.
"I had such a dread of seeing you a fine lady," he said, simply. "But, thank God, you are not that!"
The ejaculation seemed to come so directly from his heart that Erna laughed,--the same merry, childlike laugh to which she had for years been a stranger.
Waltenberg had at first observed with evident dismay the familiar greetings thus exchanged, and the look with which he had scanned Reinsfeld was darkly suspicious. Its result, however, could not but be satisfactory. This Herr Doctor in jacket and felt hat could hardly be a dangerous rival; the very ease and familiarity of his intercourse with Erna was the best of warrants that he was merely a friend of her childhood. Ernst Waltenberg was quite capable of perceiving this, and his manner when Reinsfeld was presented to him was extremely cordial.
"We are but just arrived," said the doctor, after the introduction had taken place, "and in all this merry turmoil we did not at first perceive you. But where has Wolfgang gone? I brought your future relative with me, Fräulein Thurgau. Wolf, where are you?"
His call was quite unnecessary, for Elmhorst was standing fifty paces off, looking fixedly at the group. Apparently he had not intended to join it; he now slowly approached, and Benno could not but be surprised at the formality of the greetings interchanged between the 'future relatives.' Wolfgang bowed formally, and Erna's manner seemed to indicate that this meeting was anything but agreeable to her.
"I thought you were to be in Oberstein this evening, Herr Elmhorst?" said she. "You spoke yesterday of going there."
"I did, and I have been there with Benno, but he persuaded me to come up to the alm with him."