"My good Emil!" said Frau Wollnow, "we don't agree in a great many things, and, dear me, it is certainly no wonder; he has been obliged to work so hard all his life, that it has made him a little grave and pedantic; but he is a thoroughly good man, and in this case you are entirely mistaken; at heart he is even more interested in Gotthold than I, or, if that is saying too much, quite as much so."
"It did not seem so."
"But it was only seeming. He is afraid of compromising his dignity if he talks as he really feels. I have found that all people who have had a sorrowful youth are so. Even the heart, so to speak, needs to have had its dancing lessons, and when it has had none, when it has always been compelled to beat under the pressure of straitened, gloomy surroundings, as in my poor Emil's case, people never overcome it all their lives. But what I was going to say is, that this time there is a special reason for it. My good Emil certainly never told even me--dear, kind man, as if I would have taken it amiss--that thirty or thirty-five years ago he was once very deeply in love with Gotthold's mother, when they lived in the same house in Stettin--it is a long and very romantic story."
"Oh! oh!" said Alma, "who would ever have given your husband credit for that?"
"Why," cried Ottilie, "you are entirely mistaken in Emil; his nature has a freshness, a power, a youthful fire--"
"How happy you are!" said Alma with a faint sigh.
"I hope you are no less so; but I wanted to explain why Emil always becomes so quiet when the conversation turns upon Gotthold. That is the reason of it, and then he has taken it into his head that this visit to the Brandows must turn out unlucky for him--Gotthold. You know Gotthold used to be in love with Cecilia; nay, between ourselves, I am sure he loves her still. But now, tell me yourself: can you see any great misfortune in that?"
"Not at all; I only think it rather improbable; you know I have never been able to share your enthusiasm about Cecilia, and don't see why all the men are to be in love with her. Her husband evidently isn't; at least I know a lady to whom he devotes himself whenever he meets her, in a way that proves his heart is not very strongly engaged in any other quarter."
"If he has one. Forgive me, dear Alma, you are a prudent woman, and I am sure you love your husband; but Brandow is really an extremely dangerous man. Possessed of the most attractive manners, when he chooses to adopt them; always lively and humorous, even witty, yet sensible when the occasion requires him to be so; and moreover bold, fearless, an acknowledged master of all chivalrous arts--and such things always impose upon us women--in a word, a dangerous man. Good Heavens, would it have been possible, under any other circumstances, to understand how the aristocratic, poetic Cecilia could have fallen in love with him! But what does all this avail without true love, and I do not believe Carl Brandow is capable of the feeling. Now let a man such as I have described Gotthold to be, enter the home of such a couple,--a man, moreover, who has scarcely conquered a boyish love for the wife,--indeed, if one reflects upon it, one can hardly blame my husband: such passionate natures, and in the loneliness of country life,--it really seems as if scales had fallen from my eyes. And Gotthold has not written a word all this week! Still waters run deep, but may not deep waters perhaps be still? And I have actually been the cause of it by my unlucky mania for pictures!"
"I think I can set your mind at rest, so far as that goes," said Alma. "I have found that men always have some reason for doing what they wish; if it isn't one thing, it's another. And then this evening, or to-morrow morning at latest, if we spend the night at Dollan, I can bring you the very latest and most exact news about all these interesting complications. I only fear they will prove less interesting than you expect."