"Farewell, farewell!"
The carriage rolled out of the court-yard, and Thea hid her tearful face on Bernhard's shoulder. "Oh, Bernhard," she whispered, "you will always love me dearly, very dearly, will you not?"
He kissed away her tears. "My darling, what a question to ask!" he replied. "You know that you are my sweetest, loveliest May rosebud."
She smiled at him through her tears, and he vowed inwardly that she never should shed a tear caused by word or deed of his.
The road here made a turn, and the mansion of Schönthal, upon the windows of which the last beams of the setting sun were shining, came into view once more.
Thea leaned from the carriage window and looked back. Bernhard, clasping her hand firmly in his own, looked back also. The windows of the balconied room, the same in which he had spoken with Frau von Wronsky scarcely an hour before, gleamed brilliantly.
"Is she there still?" he thought, and he seemed to hear again her low, penetrating tones, "Forget all this,"--her pale face and brilliant figure were like a shadow dimming the sunshine of his marriage-day.
CHAPTER VI.
[A FAREWELL GLASS AND A DEATH-BED.]
Far removed from the fashionable quarter of Berlin, in one of those east-end streets where labourers' carts are far more numerous than gay equipages, stood Herr Nordstedt's house. It was quite a stately structure, with two projecting wings, between which extended a little front garden, lending a retired air to the whole, and distinguishing it pleasantly among the old and rather shabby houses of the neighbourhood. The hall door was adorned by rich carvings in wood,--"The old cabinet-maker in me takes great delight in such things," Herr Nordstedt was wont to say,--and yet was so simply fashioned that it must always be regarded as a door, never as a 'portal.' Through this door on a certain evening in May walked Walter Eichhof, who had returned to town shortly after his brother's marriage, and who, before departing to continue his studies in a university town on the Rhine, desired to take leave personally of his friend Dr. Nordstedt. He passed through the hall leading to a small court-yard, and into a garden which was really very large for a city so closely built as Berlin. The wing looking upon this garden contained Dr. Nordstedt's study and his office, where he received all in need of his advice as oculist.