"Stine, we sha'n't be able to carry it through," said Jochen.
In her heart Stine had never expected to do so; nay, she had always prayed that Heaven would interpose and send Herr Gotthold to them before it was too late. To be sure, she could not acknowledge this openly, but neither did she wish to be actually unfaithful to the promise she had given Cecilia, and in her perplexity began to weep bitterly.
Jochen nodded assent, as if he wanted to show his Stine that she had now taken the right course. Clas emptied his glass and said, rising, "So we shall be here in fifteen minutes. You're so clever, Stine, you can easily settle matters, and you can come with me, Jochen."
Jochen started up and went out of the room so hastily that he left his glass half full. Stine intended to pour the liquor back into the bottle again, but in her absence of mind drank it herself. Tears fell from her eyes: "We poor women!" she murmured.
CHAPTER XXIX.
After Stine had left the room, Cecilia still remained sitting by her child's little bed. Gretchen had fallen asleep, and it now seemed to the mother that the innocent little face looked paler, and the white, delicate hands often twitched convulsively. Suppose she should be seriously ill? Suppose she should die, and all the horror and grief of these hours had been endured in vain?
She pressed her hands to her throbbing temples. There was no one--no one who could counsel and help her. And yet she was with friends, with her good old Stine, who had received her yesterday with a flood of joyful tears, who was nearly beside herself with grief and joy at the unexpected visit, and with worthy Jochen, whose honest face mingled pleasantly with the happy memories of her girlish days--how deserted she would feel in yonder foreign land! Would they not look upon her, treat her as an adventuress? And could she blame them for it? Could she tell her pitiful story to all the world--nay, even to one human being?
The harassing anxiety drove her from her seat to the window of the next room. A broad expanse of blue sea flashed between the gable-roofs of the neighbors' houses and the white downs; a sail gleamed on the distant horizon. It was a fresh, bright scene that was framed in by the low window, and she gazed at it with the eyes with which he had taught her to behold nature; then she remembered that the empty waste of waters, with the lonely ship pursuing its solitary way into the unknown distance, was to her and her child a cruel, pitiless reality. Her head drooped; she did not notice the slight noise outside the door, and only looked up when it opened, and Stine, an expression of mingled timidity and joy on her face, which was swollen and red with weeping, entered, and then looked back towards some one who was standing behind her. A sudden foreboding, which drove every drop of blood to her heart, thrilled Cecilia's frame. Who could the dark figure in the entry be except the one person for whom she had so eagerly longed, for whose coming she had waited and hoped as the devotee waits and hopes for a miracle? Now he was here, because he loved her--and yet, and yet it could not, must not be; and her half-extended arms fell, her trembling hands did not return the clasp of his.
"Where is Gretchen?"
They went to the child's bed, where good Stine had already preceded them. The little pale cheeks were now deeply flushed, the hands twitched more violently; Cecilia's anxious eyes said, what did not cross her trembling lips until they had again entered the next room, "If she dies, I have killed her."