Bertram started. That name--from her, fair, chaste lips--had a doubly hateful sound.
"I know," he answered; "not from your parents, but I know."
"They will have shrunk from telling you," Erna continued. "Mamma was most reluctant to sanction Aunt Lydia's coming; but Aunt Lydia begged so very hard to be allowed to see you once more, and she thought that now, when you have been so very, very ill, and when you are going away for such a long time, you might be in gentler mood. And yet she was afraid to encounter you. She grew so nervous as we were driving along, that I believe she was uncommonly near getting out and leaving us to continue the journey without her. At last I could scarcely bear to witness her uneasiness any longer, and I felt considerable relief when I got out myself in order to walk across the hill--from Fischbach, don't you know--and as I was coming along, I was debating whether, if I reached home before them, I might not beg you to be a little friendly towards auntie. You ... but I am not sure whether to go on ..."
"I beg you will do so."
"I only wanted to add: you owe it to her."
"Do I?"
"I should think so; for her only fault has been that she has loved you and still loves you, and you ..."
"My dear child, I beg you will go on without any shyness. I am anxious, very anxious, you should do so."
"And you ... left her, after you had been engaged for a whole year!"
"And then I wrote her a letter of renunciation, did I not? And the poor forsaken one, in her despair, engaged herself within four-and-twenty hours to Count Finkenburg, who had long been vainly suing for her hand? And the old gentleman was so enchanted that scarce a week after he died from rapture and paralysis combined, without even having time to remember his fair bride in his will! Was it not so?"