Thea sometimes sadly missed her idyllic Thiergarten home, but in her secret soul she was proud of Bernhard's untiring energy, and thought it only natural that he should have but little time to devote to her, since, as she had been educated to think, wealth entailed many duties upon its possessor.
What she did regret was that, even when he came home to her, it was often with a clouded brow. He could not forget even in her presence the business of the day. She told herself that this was also quite natural; he must take more interest in these important and weighty matters than in her small joys and sorrows. Nevertheless, she felt a certain void in her life, which could not be filled either by her domestic occupations or by her intercourse with her parents or with Adela Hohenstein. Adela was friends with Alma again, and had promised to be very quiet and good; but it is to be feared that she was a sad romp still at heart. Thea laughed and gossiped with the girls, as she had always done, but somehow she did not seem really to belong to them any longer.
Thus the winter passed, and Easter came again. Lothar and Walter both came to Eichhof at Bernhard's invitation, but the holidays were very different from those of the previous year. Lothar's debts amounted to such a sum that Bernhard, who now needed all his money for his improvements, declared that he would never again pay one penny for his brother, and would help him now only upon condition that he would have himself transferred from Berlin to his native province, where the cavalry regiments were scattered about in small garrisons and there was not so much opportunity to spend money. Willy-nilly, Lothar was obliged to agree to this condition, since he was utterly powerless to extricate himself from his financial embarrassments without his brother's aid, and was only too grateful to be helped out of a scrape once more.
"I believe you are the only one who has any real compassion for me," said Lothar one day to Alma Rosen, with whom he had been left alone in his sister-in-law's boudoir. "You pity me, do you not?"
"And so does Thea," Alma replied, a little embarrassed, as she always was with Lothar; "but then she is glad too, for she thinks that you will be near us--that is, near Eichhof--in your new garrison."
"Well, yes, that would be the best thing that could happen to me," he said, smiling. "And Thea is glad? That's very good of her. You both have excellent hearts, you and Thea, but your father and mother, you know, look upon me as a terrible black sheep."
Alma was silent, and looked out of the window. She could not deny the truth of his assertion, and she would not have admitted it for the world.
Then Lothar, in default of any other occupation or amusement, proceeded to give Alma a short lecture upon himself. "Pray don't turn your eyes so resolutely away," he began; "indeed, I am not quite such a black sheep as I am called; only I cannot, somehow or other, manage my money affairs. It's contrary to my nature, and nobody ever taught me how to do it, and yet when I go all wrong every one is vastly surprised. Now, my dear Alma, is not that perfectly unjust? There's no denying that money in itself is a very low, vulgar thing, and consequently only common men can manage it properly. I like beautiful things, and never want to ask their cost. I enjoy, and I like to share my enjoyment with others, without pausing to consider its price. I bask in the sunshine and consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, who never count the cost and yet continue to live. Suddenly a black cloud thrusts itself between me and the sun, and a perfect hail-storm of unpaid bills comes pelting down upon me, while all my dear friends and neighbours join in a chorus of 'You are not worthy to enjoy the sunshine, for you never remember that twice one are two.' Oh, yes, my dear Alma, life is very hard, especially when one is so alone in the world as I am. Yes, if I had a wife as gentle, wise, and lovely as your sister Thea, something might be made of me after all. I might become a really respectable member of society."
It was perhaps quite as well that Thea's entrance interrupted the conversation at this point; and half an hour later Lothar was making preparations for his departure, whistling an opera air, and with as little thought of the pelting storm of unpaid bills which his brother was sure to convert to sunshine as of Alma's sweet serious face. The girl meanwhile sat by herself in the bow-windowed room, and would have fervently prayed heaven to send Lothar a wise and gentle wife like Thea, if only her heart would not have throbbed so loud and fast in its protest against any such petition.
Adela Hohenstein came running in and roused her from her dreams. "Here you sit lonely and forlorn as an enchanted princess in her tower gazing drearily from her window in hopes of a glimpse of some princely deliverer!" she cried, laughing. "Good heavens, how stupid and quiet Eichhof is, when one compares it with what it was awhile ago!"