"I think the President has been here," said Justus, "for the last four days. He is to be Chairman of the Board for the new railway. They made him the most splendid offer, I am told."
"So the papers say, but I do not believe it," answered Reinhold. "A man like the President could not agree to such a project, and moreover, if he were here, he would certainly have sent for me."
"And the day after to-morrow you will be at your post with a north-easter whistling in your ears, and will swagger about in your pilot coat. What a lucky man you are!" Justus sighed; Reinhold looked at his friend, who, with downcast eyes walked dejectedly beside him, and then burst into a fit of laughter.
"It is all very well to laugh," said Justus; "'laden with foreign treasures, he returns to his former home,' but how do I stand? A leafless stem."
"Do not cry yourself down, Justus."
"Ah! cry myself down!" said Justus; "do you mean to say that it is not enough to drive a poor fellow mad! I meant to have spared you this to-day, so as not to disturb your happiness and joy; but perhaps it is better for me to tell you now, instead of writing to you as I intended. You will be in his immediate neighbourhood, and will surely do me the kindness to go over some day and appeal to the old gentleman's conscience--though I don't believe he is old."
"Alack!" said Reinhold, "blows the wind in that quarter?"
"And how it blows!" cried Justus, "so that one can neither see nor hear. You know that Meta wrote to me on her arrival that every thing was going capitally. Mamma was, as she foresaw, entirely on her side, but papa, of course, made a tremendous row--only then, as she also foretold, to give in utterly a little while after, supposing that the 'stone-cutter' could maintain his daughter suitably, as he could give her nothing--not a shilling--he was a poor, ruined man. Good! I accept the ruined father-in-law, and he accepts me upon my showing that I had already for some years made--but you know all about that, and I only repeat it now to set before you in its proper light the abominable treachery of this man." Justus had halted under a lamp, and took a letter out of his pocket. "If the spelling leaves something to be desired, the letters are big enough, as you see, and the interpretation is clear enough from one point of view at any rate." Justus struck the crumpled leaf with the back of his hand, and read:
"'Sir' (the first time I was 'Dear Sir'),
"'In consequence of a telegram that I have just received from Berlin, the state of my affairs is so completely altered, my daughter's future prospects are so entirely changed, that the position which you can offer her at the best no longer appears sufficient to me; and before I give a final answer'--as if he had not done so already, the Jesuit!--'I must, as a conscientious man and provident father, beg for a few weeks delay, until the fortunate conjuncture of circumstances which has just occurred for me can be completely gone into.