"Now it seems as though she were looking straight into my eyes; now she clasps her hands as if she were praying."
Ludwig said, with pedagogic calmness:
"If you continue to gaze with such intensity through the telescope your face will become distorted."
Marie laughed. "If I had a crooked mouth, and kept one eye shut, people would say, 'There goes that ugly little Marie!' Then I should not have to wear a veil any more."
She distorted her face as she had described, and turned it toward Ludwig, who said hastily: "Don't—don't do that, Marie."
"Is it not all the same to you whether I am ugly or pretty?" she retorted. Then, as if to soften the harshness of her words, she added: "Even if I were ugly, would you love me—as the fakir loves his Brahma?"
Ludwig continued his correspondence with the learned Herr Mercatoris. He always dictated his letters to Marie. No one in the neighborhood had yet seen his own writing. Therefore, it would have been impossible for him to ask the pastor anything relating to the baroness without Marie knowing it. In one of his letters, however, he inquired how the mother of the lad he had once had in his care was conducting herself at the manor, and was informed that the woman had disappeared—and without leaving any explanation for her conduct—a few days after the eclipse of the moon. The baroness had been greatly troubled by the woman's going, but would not consent to having a search made for her, as she had taken nothing from the manor.
This incident made Count Vavel believe that the woman had secretly joined the band of robbers, and that there would be another attempt made sometime to break into the manor.
From that time the count slept more frequently in his observatory than he did in his bedchamber, where an entire arsenal of muskets and other firearms were always kept in readiness.