“Be quiet there!” cried Otto.
“There are strangers at the hall!” said the postilion; “I will only let them know that another is coming.”
Otto gazed at the garden, glanced up toward the windows, where mine of the ladies showed themselves only out of a side building a female head was stretched out, whose hair was put back underneath a cap. Otto recognized the grown-together eyebrows. “Is she the first person I am to see here?” sighed he; and the carriage rolled into the inner court. The dogs barked, the turkey-cocks gobbled, but not Wilhelm showed himself. The Kammerjunker came—the excellent neighbor! and immediately afterward Sophie; both exclaimed with smiles, “Welcome!”
“See, here we have our man!” said the Kammerjunker; “we can make use of him in the play!”
“It is glorious you are come!” cried Sophie. “We shall immediately put you under arrest.” She extended her hand to him—he pressed it to his lips. “We will have tableaux vivants this evening!” said she: “the pastor has never seen any. We have no service from Wilhelm; he is in Svendborg, and will not return for two days. You must be the officer; the Kammerjunker will represent the Somnambulist, who comes with her light through the window. Will you?”
“Everything you desire!” said Otto.
“Do not speak of it!” returned Sophie, and laid her finger on her lips. The mother descended the steps.
“Dear Thostrup!” said she, and pressed, with warm cordiality, both his hands. “I have really quite yearned after you. Now Wilhelm is away, you must for two whole days put up with us alone.”
Otto went through the long passage where hung the old portraits; it was as if these also wished welcome. It only seemed a night full of many dreams which had passed since he was here; a year in the lapse of time is also not so long as a winter’s night in the life of man.
Here it was so agreeable, so home-like; no one could have seen by the trees that since then they had stood stripped of leaves and covered with snow; luxuriantly green they waved themselves in the sun’s warmth, just as when Otto last gazed out of this window.