"She too?" he thought, and an indescribable feeling of satisfaction ran through his veins.
Hertha urgently requested an interview of ten minutes with him, and named as a place of meeting the churchyard at Wengern, and the hour six in the evening.
"One knows pretty well what those urgent interviews mean," he thought, twisting his moustache with a smile. After all, any one who was invited to a rendezvous with countesses need not despair.
To dodge those who might spy on his movements, he took a longish walk towards evening, from which he tried to return unobserved, for the churchyard was only a few steps distant from the parsonage.
On the stroke of six he emerged from the shadow of the church porch, and saw Hertha's figure darkly silhouetted in the late twilight as she sat waiting on a tombstone. His heart beat riotously in delighted anticipation. He approached her with his hat in his hand. "What a fascination and charm there must be about my person," he reflected, "if even this haughty highflyer succumbs to it!"
Hertha shot up at sight of him. She wore her old grey cloak, and had drawn the hood over her head and tied it under the chin. She was painfully excited. Her hands clasped the grave railings convulsively. Her eyes flashed in the darkness.
"You will think that this is a strange proceeding, Herr Kandidat," she said, in a trembling voice.
"Oh no, not at all," he assured her with a gallant bow.
"Ordinarily," she went on, "girls like me are not in the habit of appointing to meet people...."
She halted. There was something in her tone which made him feel a trifle less triumphant; it was almost as if she would have said, "people of your position."