But the calls of duty had to be obeyed, and ere long the prime minister and his bride returned to Aronsberg, to take their place at court and in society, and to have endless fêtes and receptions given in their honour. Here Alcyone's gentle unassuming manners, added to her great beauty, made her a universal favourite. The malicious Gräfin von Dunkelherz, however, disseminated strange stories concerning the new Baroness, and aroused the suspicions of those who were already perhaps somewhat jealous of the many charms united in the fair person of the young stranger.
Amid the series of festivities given in honour of the newly-married couple, it was observed that whenever a storm of thunder and lightning broke over the neighbourhood Alcyone was painfully agitated. Wherever she and her husband might be, she implored him to convey her home as soon as possible; the electric influence so entirely overcame her that more than once she seemed completely gone—so utterly did she lose colour and consciousness—so deadly pale did she become. To Bruno's impetuous nature this unfortunate tendency proved a serious annoyance. He considered that by a little firm exercise of moral courage his wife could have retained her senses. Often after conveying her home and reappearing alone (by her earnest request) at some state banquet, he would be universally rallied about her captiousness, and even made to see (owing to Olga's kind offices) that his friends considered the whole affair in a somewhat mysterious light. It will be remembered that Alcyone stipulated for one night of retirement every month, when, undisturbed and alone, she spent long solitary hours upon the roof. She entreated Bruno, by all his affection for her, neither to approach the place himself nor to suffer any one else to intrude upon her privacy. Somehow or other this circumstance, with numerous additions, became bruited abroad, and it was whispered that the Baron's wife was in regular communication with demons. Bribed and listening servants heard voices of no earthly timbre, speaking in an unknown language. More they were unable to say, for Bruno as yet kept faithful guard over his wife's hours of mystic retreat.
At last, however, the time approached when the sittings of the Reichstag terminated, and when all who could forsook the dusty purlieus of the town for the mountains, the sea, or their country dwellings. People began to be too busy making their own plans to attend to those of their neighbours, and Bruno retired once more with his Baroness to Tiefträume Forest. There in their small cottage, with its low long veranda covered with creepers, they spent weeks—nay, months—of uninterrupted happiness. On one side of their home patches of wild moorland were beautifully interspersed with cultivated oases of garden. Towards the east rose the dark masses of the pine forest, giving with their sombre colouring an ever-fresh beauty to the foreground of lovely flowering shrubs. Passing through tangled masses of bramble and fern, the path led by bare gray rocks and tufts of purple heather to some ivy-covered bower; or you came upon some exquisite smooth-shaven little lawn, jewelled in bright patterns of many coloured flowers, and adding brilliance and perfume to the scene.
Here Alcyone and her husband wandered together, or, perhaps descending the steps at the end of their garden, stood on the brink of the little river Naecken, which tumbled and hurried through its narrow rocky channel, thus dividing them from the forest. Lower down the streamlet formed a small lake, on which a boat was kept, and where Bruno was wont to row his wife, and try to teach her unskilful hand to guide the oar. He laid these lines beside her one morning towards the end of their country sojourn when, fresh and fair as Aurora herself, she took her place at their morning meal:—
BARON BRUNO AND ALCYONE.
P. 22.
"One moment let me live the time again,
The sweet, sweet time when o'er the silvery loch
The frail bark sped, or hand-in-hand we climbed
Together, where the divided mountain path