"It is the ordering of Providence," cried Sabine; and looked with delight on the newly-returned one.
In the uniform tenor of her domestic life, she had for many years had a cordial liking for Anton. Since he had left her, she had found out that she loved him, and had hidden the feeling in her heart. No trace of her love nor her renunciation had appeared in the regular household. Hardly had she by a look betrayed the struggle going on within. Now, in the rapture of meeting, her feelings broke out. She looked at Anton in beaming delight, thinking of nothing but the joy of having him with her again, and not remarking the traces of a different feeling in Anton's pale features. He has found her indeed, but only to lose her again forever.
Still does Sabine hold his hand, and now she leads him through the corridor to her brother's study.
What are you doing, Sabine? This house is a good house, certainly, but not one in which people feel poetically, are easily moved, open their arms at once, and press new-comers to their heart. It is a straightforward, prosaic house, where requests are made and refused in few words; and it is a proud and rigid house besides. Remember this, it is no tender welcome to which you are leading your friend.
This Sabine felt, and delayed a moment before she opened the door; but her resolve was taken, and, holding Anton's hand in hers, she drew him in, crying to her brother with a beaming face, "Here he is; he is returned to us."
The merchant rose from his writing-table, but he remained standing by it; and his first words, coldly and peremptorily spoken, were these: "Release my sister's hand, Mr. Wohlfart."
Sabine drew back. Anton stood alone in the middle of the room, and looked at the principal. His strongly-marked features were aged during the last year, his hair had grown gray, the lines in his face had deepened.
"That I should enter here at the risk of being unwelcome," said Anton, "will show you how strong my desire was to see you and the firm once more. If I have excited your displeasure, do not let me feel it in this hour."
The merchant turned to his sister. "Leave us, Sabine; I wish to speak to Mr. Wohlfart alone." Sabine went up to her brother, and stood erect before him. She said not a word, but with a bright glance, in which a firm resolve was plainly visible, she looked full into his frowning face, and then left the room. The merchant looked gloomily after her, and turned to Anton. "What brings you back to us, Wohlfart?" said he. "Have you failed to attain what your youthful ambition hoped for, and are you come to seek in the tradesman's house the happiness that once seemed inadequate to your claims? I hear that your friend Fink has settled himself on the baron's property; has he sent you back to us because you were in his way there?"
Anton's brow grew clouded. "I do not appear before you as an adventurer," said he; "you are unjust in expressing such a suspicion; nor does it become me to submit to it. There was a time when your judgment of me was more friendly; I thought of that time when I sought you out; I think of it now, that I may forgive your injurious words."