"How you startled me!"
"And you me still more! What has happened, Ottomar? I implore you to tell me! Is it the letter?--a challenge?"
"Or a sentence of death, perhaps? Nothing of importance--a registered letter which my father received for me."
"An unimportant letter--registered! But if it is not the letter, it is what has for so long worried and absorbed you. How do matters stand between you and Carla, Ottomar!"
"Between me and Carla? What an extraordinary question! How should matters stand between oneself and a lady to whom one will shortly be betrothed?"
"Ottomar, look me in the face. You do not love Carla!"
Ottomar tried to meet her glance, but was not quite successful. "You are silly," he said, with an embarrassed smile; "those are girlish fancies."
"And is not Carla a girl? And do you not think that she has fancies too?--that she has pictured to herself the happiness that she hopes for at your side?--that for her, as for every other girl, this happiness can only exist with love, and that she, that you both will be unhappy if this love is absent on one side or the other, or on both? Do you not believe this?"
"I do not believe a word of it," said Ottomar.
He looked at his sister now and smiled; but his eyes were fixed and hard, and his sad yet ironical smile cut Elsa to the heart.