"You seem very sure that she will have me," he said. "Everybody does not think me such a fine fellow as you do."
"Lieber Junge, I am a woman, and when I see a girl grow thin and pale without apparent cause—well, I look for the cause. Nora has been very unhappy in the last days. I suspect strongly she has been suffering from your conflict, and no doubt looks upon her life and happiness as ruined. That is why I tell you not to wait too long."
There was so much affection in her tone that the faint mockery in her words left no sting.
"I will not wait long, I promise you," Wolff said.
At the door he turned and looked back at her. It was almost as though he had meant to surprise her into a betrayal of some hidden feeling; but Frau von Arnim had not moved, nor was there any change in the grave face.
"Tell Hildegarde that I shall never forget," he said earnestly, "that I owe her my happiness, and that I thank her."
"I shall give her your message," Frau von Arnim answered.
The fate that arranges the insignificant, all-important chances of our lives ordained that at the same moment when Wolff von Arnim passed out of the drawing-room Nora Ingestre came down the stairs. She held an open telegram in her hand, and the light from the hall window fell on a face white with grief and fear.
Arnim strode to meet her.
"What is it?" he demanded. "What has happened?"