He had stood up and was about to depart without another word. Then suddenly the colonel took him in his arms. This seasoned, clear-headed man had great difficulty in restraining his emotion.
"I have long looked on you as a son, Reimers," he said. "And that all this has turned out so differently from my expectations is a grief to me, a very great grief. I cannot tell you how great."
Reimers took his departure. The colonel looked after him till the portière fell.
Whose fault was it that the young man left the room with hanging head and miserable face, instead of with the beaming eyes of an accepted lover? Whose fault was it that the happiness of two young people had thus been shattered to pieces?
The colonel sat down before his writing-table and let his clenched fist fall in helpless anger upon the desk. He had not even the satisfaction of being able to direct his wrath against anybody or anything. The fault lay in something uncalled-for and apparently unavoidable, an evil, and at the same time necessary, outcome of the existing order of things.
Then he began to reflect. How should he break the bad news to Mariechen? By many little scarcely noticeable signs he had become convinced that she loved the unfortunate young officer. There was a delicate understanding, an unspoken engagement, between the two. How should he explain to her Reimers' sudden withdrawal?
This talk about the examination at the Staff College, and Reimers' necessary care of his health, was not sufficient to break off an honourable attachment. He must rather think of some means for effecting a permanent, even if painful, cure, and put an end once for all to his daughter's dream of love.
The colonel made out a regular plan of campaign. Among his relations there had been a cousin, Otto von Krewesmühlen, the owner of a large property in Franconia. The poor wretch had passed more of his lifetime in Meran and Cannes than on his own estate; but he had married in spite of that for the sake of the entail, and unfortunately had married an acquaintance in the Riviera who also was not on the shores of the Mediterranean solely for pleasure. Two boys had been born to them, but Otto von Krewesmühlen had not long survived their birth. The eldest child had followed the father not only in the entail but also in the manner of his death, and the widow and the second son were only like two feeble flames which the wind of life permits out of charity still to flicker for a while.
This cousin must serve to point the moral for his poor Mariechen, and help her to forget her young love in as painless a manner as possible. It happened fortunately that Marie kept up a correspondence with her Franconian relations.
"I had something to ask you, Mariechen," began Falkenhein at supper. "Oh yes, of course; have you had any more news from your Aunt Krewesmühlen?"