"You might rather have been fishing," said Willy; "just see what a splendid catch I got over on the other bank. A person ought not to dream in broad daylight. He ought to be properly occupied, my mother says--and my mother is always right."
CHAPTER IV.
The families of Falkenried and Wallmoden had been friendly for years. As owners of adjoining estates they visited each other frequently; the children grew up together, and many mutual interests drew the bonds of friendship still closer.
As both families were only comfortably well off, the sons had their own way to make, which, after completing their education, Major Hartmut von Falkenried and Herbert Wallmoden had done. They had been playmates as children, and had remained true to that friendship when grown to manhood.
At one time the parents thought to cement this friendship by a marriage between the--at that time--Lieutenant Falkenried and Regine Wallmoden. The young couple seemed in perfect accord with it, and all looked propitious for the match, when something took place which brought the plan to a sudden end.
A cousin of the Wallmoden family--an incorrigible fellow who, through divers bad capers, had made it impossible to remain at home, had, long ago, gone out into the wide world. After much travel and a rather adventurous life, he had landed in Roumania, where he acted as inspector upon the estates of a rich Bojar. The rich man died, and the inspector thought best to retrieve his lost fortunes and position in life by marriage with the widow.
It was consummated, and he returned to his old home, accompanied by his wife, for a visit to his relatives, after an absence of more than ten years.
Frau von Wallmoden's bloom of youth had long passed, but she brought with her her daughter by her first marriage--Zalika Rojanow.
The young girl, hardly seventeen years old, with her foreign beauty and charm of her glowing temperament, burst like a meteor upon the horizon of this German country nobility, whose life flowed in such calm, even channels.
And she was a strange object in this circle, whose forms and manners she disregarded with sovereign indifference, and who stared at her as at a being from another world. There was many a serious shaking of heads and much condemnation, which was not uttered aloud, because they saw in the girl only a temporary visitor, who would disappear as suddenly as she had come into view.