"You are not well," said Leo, who read on the familiar features the story of recent mental excitement.
That Felicitas had something to do with it, and his own homecoming, it was not difficult to guess.
"Let me sit down quietly for a few minutes," Ulrich said, pressing his hand against his left side. "I shall be better soon."
He refused Leo's offers of refreshment, and with short hard gasps breathed in the perfumed evening air which was wafted into the room from the garden. When Leo saw him leaning back in his old accustomed place in the corner of the sofa, his heart bounded. How often they had sat together there, making youthful plans, while the grasshoppers chirruped outside, and the solemn quavering strains of a concertina sounded from the stables!
They had often touched on the subject of marriage, and had agreed that their wives must be two bosom friends, or, better still, two sisters, so that their old hearts' intimacy should not be sacrificed.
Nothing seemed changed outwardly to-night. The grasshoppers chirruped; the concertina began timidly, as if uncertain whether it might dare, now the master had come home. And yet everything was different.
"Still I have got him!" Leo's soul cried aloud. "And I will not let him slip through my fingers."
"You have seen how things are now with your own eyes," Ulrich said, sitting up, "I am afraid there's not much to congratulate you upon."
"I have found nothing but gross negligence," Leo assented.
"If I may venture to advise you, I should get rid of the old man, despite considerations of kinship and friendship. At all events, he isn't much use to you."