She stared up at him absently with wide eyes.
"It is nothing," he stammered. "A scratch--nothing more."
She appeared not to hear what he said.
"Pull yourself together like a man. Not a word, not a look, must betray your real feelings."
With this self-exhortation he withdrew, and wearily put down the light on the table.
What now? Where should he go? To stay meant ruin and damnation.
This very hour he must go away. Away! Somewhere, anywhere, so long as a barrier of his fellow-creatures separated him from her for evermore. And in breathless haste he began to gather together papers that proved his father's guilt, as if they were the most precious possessions in the world.
CHAPTER XV
More than three months had passed away since Boleslav von Schranden had turned his back on the inheritance of his fathers.
In the meantime spring had come. Moss, starred with anemones, grew amongst the short-bladed grass; the ditches were full of a luxuriant growth of bindweed and nettles; and at every breeze the boughs rained a shower of crumbling catkins. The plough left a trail of smooth, black furrows on the bosom of the awakening earth, and seed-cloths were already being put out to air.