"Or cold either. That was proven the day she was drenched to the skin. She hasn't even a sniffle from it."
"I have requested her to take a servant with her in future when she goes upon her rambles," said Herbert quietly. "To be lost in the forest and have to wade through a brook and then finally be forced to call to her aid a stray huntsman, are things that I do not care to have repeated. Adelheid saw that as clearly as I, and will not go unattended for the future."
"Ah, she's an excellent, sensible wife, a healthy nature through and through, with a proper aversion for adventure and romance," said Regine warmly. "Ah, there are other visitors on the tower. I thought we would be the only guests to-day."
Wallmoden glanced indifferently toward the tall, aristocratic young man who had just emerged from the tower door and was coming toward them; Frau von Eschenhagen's glance was careless, too, but her look changed to one both sharp and intense, and she cried out:
"Herbert, look!"
"At what?"
"At that stranger. What a strange resemblance."
"To whom?" asked Herbert, looking searchingly, too, into the face of the stranger, who was nearer them now.
"It's impossible! That is no passing resemblance. It is he, himself," cried his sister.
She sprang up pale with excitement, with her eyes fixed and staring at the young stranger, who was just putting his foot on the first step of the shaded veranda. Now his eyes met hers, his large, dark, flaming eyes which had so often looked into her own and pleaded for him in his childhood, and all doubts vanished.