‘And what will you do, Rex?’ asked Greif.
‘I will help Aunt Therese,’ answered the other.
‘Why do you not go somewhere and amuse yourself?’
‘That is easier said than done. My amusement will consist in counting the days until you come back. We shall both do that.’
‘Why not go and stay at Greifenstein as you both did before? It is more comfortable.’
‘I prefer this. There is a better view. I think I will buy the top of the hill over there, and lay the foundation of an observatory. It will be an occupation, and they send me so much money that I do not know what to do with it.’
‘I hope you are not going to build a house to live in,’ said Greif, suddenly. ‘Remember that your home is here.’
‘Thank you,’ answered Rex.
The words were pleasant to him, for in the last month he had begun to feel an attachment for Sigmundskron which he had never felt for any place before. The mere idea of leaving it was painful to him, and if he must be parted for a time from Greif and Hilda—he coupled their names in his thoughts, and rather obstinately, too—he knew that the time would pass more quickly in the old castle than anywhere else. At forty years of age, the idea of beginning again the wandering life he had led so long, rambling from one country and capital to another, now spending a year at a University and then six months in Paris, or a winter in St. Petersburg, never settled, never at home, though at home everywhere—the mere thought was painfully repugnant. To live with Greif and Hilda in their ancient home, to build at last the noble observatory of which he had often idly dreamed, and to spend the best years of life that remained to him in peaceful study among those he loved, was a prospect infinitely attracting, and apparently most easy of realisation.
When Hilda and Greif were gone, Rex discovered that they were really the central figures in his visions of future happiness. The emptiness they left behind was indescribably dreary. He wondered why he had not experienced the same sensation when he and the baroness had stayed at Greifenstein after the wedding. He had not missed the two so painfully then; indeed he had enjoyed the baroness’s society very much, and would not then have been altogether sorry to have been left with her for a longer time. But the month they had spent at Sigmundskron had produced a great change, it seemed. Before that, he had assuredly not been in the habit of thinking so much about Greif and Hilda, nor, in Greifenstein, had he expected to meet them at every turn, in every dusky corner, when he walked through the house alone, as was the case now. It was quite certain that they had not formerly haunted his dreams; whereas now he could not close his eyes without seeing Hilda’s face, and Greif’s beside it.