"It must be Herr Wildermann—can he be crying?" said Basil to himself, his cheeks growing red as the idea struck him. "What should I do?"
He had no time to consider the question, for as he stood in perplexity his little dog Yelpie, who had followed him into the room, suddenly becoming aware of the state of things, dashed forward with a short sharp bark.
"Yelpie—Yelpie," cried Basil; "be quiet, Yelpie. It's only Herr Wildermann. Don't you know him, Yelpie? What a stupid you are!"
He went on talking fast to give the young German time to recover himself, for, on hearing Basil's voice, Ulric had come forward from the shelter of the curtains. He was not red, but pale,—very pale, with a look of such intense misery in his eyes, that Basil's momentary feeling of contempt entirely faded into one of real anxiety and sympathy.
"Are you ill, Herr Wildermann? You look so strange. Is your mother ill? Is anything dreadful the matter?" he asked hurriedly, pressing forward nearer to the young man.
Ulric tried to smile, but it was a poor attempt, and he felt that it was so. Suddenly a sort of weak, faint feeling came over him—he had walked over to the Park in the full heat of the day, and the meals that were eaten over the grocer's shop were very frugal!—he had not been prepared for the news that had met him. "Could I—might I have a glass of water, Master Basil?" he said, drawing to him a chair and dropping into it.
"I'll ring for—no, stay, I'll fetch it myself," said Basil, with quick understanding. "I shouldn't like the servants to know he had been crying—poor man," he thought to himself as he left the room. And in two minutes he was back with a glass of wine and water.
"I made Sims put some sherry in it," he said half apologetically. "You've knocked yourself up somehow, Herr Wildermann, haven't you?"
And Ulric drank obediently, and managed this time to smile more successfully. "How kind and thoughtful the boy was—how could he be the cause of such sorrow, if indeed he understood it!" thought the young man to himself.
"I—yes—perhaps it was the hot sun," he said confusedly, as he put down the glass. "Thank you, very much. I am all right now. Had we not better begin? Not that I am hurried," he went on. "I can stay a full hour from now. I have no engagements—nothing to hurry me home," he added sadly, for in his heart he was thinking how he dreaded the return home, and what he would have to tell his poor old mother.