With the instinct of self-preservation, she had tried to shunt the responsibility for what had happened on Ulrich's shoulders, in the same way as she had blamed Leo as an accomplice, so that Ulrich's easily disturbed conscience began to accuse him of being the cause of all the misery.
"She was only like an irresponsible child," he said to himself, "following the whim of the moment. I ought to have thought of that and have remained firm in opposing her, even when it was the fate of her own flesh and blood that she was deciding upon."
And then, what was worst of all was, that she had done it for him and him alone. So that he might continue to enjoy the friendship of the man who bore on him the stain of having killed the child's father, that child had been sent into banishment to meet his death. A sacrifice so cruel and unnatural had, as it was bound to be, been avenged, and, as things had shaped themselves, it had all been of no avail. The object for which the stupendous sacrifice had been made was not attained.
For he could no longer shut his eyes to the fact that he was losing his friend, his boyhood's comrade and well-beloved who, ever since he could remember, had been first in his thoughts, who had been his pride and glory and rock of strength, who seemed to embody all the health and physical power that fate had denied to himself.
He no longer understood him. The laws that governed his emotions were strange to him, and what once had seemed to him like a perfect, rushing harmony of Mother Nature's, now was like a shrieking confusion of discordant notes.
Whether it was himself who had changed so much, or the other, he couldn't say; he was only clear on one point, that every fresh utterance of Leo's estranged and hurt him.
No one knew better than his friend how dear the small step-son had been to his heart; but on the day of the funeral he had got a letter from Leo so stiffly and frigidly expressed, that it might have been the conventional condolences of an absolute stranger.
It was indeed a melancholy home-coming for Ulrich. No one met him at the station. But the station-master, who recognised the baron as he flashed his lantern upon him, helped him out of the railway-carriage, and spoke a few words of respectful sympathy.
The old coachman, Wilhelm, seated on the box, wiped away his tears at his master's approach, and when he laid his hand on his shoulder and said to him in a low voice, "Ah, Wilhelm, we shall not see our boy again," he nearly let the reins slip out of his weather-beaten hands from emotion.
Ulrich had brought back with him Paulchen's trunks and play boxes, and these were piled high on the back seat of the sleigh. Among them were the two big Christmas parcels of toys which the little fellow had looked out for so expectantly on Christmas Eve, and gone in search of. They had been delivered the next day by the pleased postman.