Thea's cheeks flushed and grew pale; her hands trembled as she collected, with nervous haste, the various letters lying upon her table, and which Lothar, who watched her narrowly, could see were postmarked 'Berlin.'
For a moment she could not reply in words, but Lothar, believing that he read an answer in her face to his words, cried, "Oh, I see,--you know it all! They have written you all about it from Berlin, have they not?"
"Hush!" she said, imperatively, her face dyed with a burning blush. "How dare you touch upon that subject?"
"Oh, it is just that which drove me mad,--which made me dream what I said of Werner possible," Lothar exclaimed, passionately. "I knew how unhappy you must be. I hate Bernhard for it, but I hated Werner still more, because I thought that in your misery you----"
Thea had turned away, and in silent indignation would have left the room, but Lothar interposed between her and the door, and, throwing himself at her feet, cried, "Forgive me! forgive me! My sin is my excuse; for I love you, Thea, I love you! more--far more--than all the rest!"
Suddenly he sprang to his feet. A servant entered with some commonplace message.
Lothar stood for a moment as though paralyzed. He heard the man's voice and then Thea's as though from some vast distance, and when he looked around Thea had vanished, and the servant was asking whether the Herr Lieutenant would drive home in the open wagon or the covered carriage.
For an instant Lothar stared at him in bewilderment. Then he passed his hand across his brow. "No; the Countess's kindness is unnecessary," he said, when the explanation of the scene dawned upon him. "I am no longer giddy, and I can ride home."
He left the room, and in the hall he encountered Alma, who had dried her tears and bathed her eyes.
"Farewell, my dear Alma," he said, with a deliberate gravity, almost a solemnity of manner, quite foreign to him.