"But why?" exclaimed Erika. "This is perfect nonsense! It was settled that we should ride together to-morrow as usual."
"Indeed! You expected him to ride with you after you had rejected him?"
"He was perfectly agreed," Erika eagerly declared: "we parted the best of friends. I do not want to marry him, but I prize his friendship immensely. I told him so. He has surely put that in the letter. He is never unjust; he must have told you that I was nice to him. How could I help being so, when I pitied him so much?" The girl's voice trembled. "You have missed something in the letter; you must have missed something," she persisted.
Her grandmother opened the letter again, and read, first in an undertone, then aloud: "Yes, here it is: 'Never was man rejected more charmingly, with greater sweetness, than I by the Countess Erika; but it did me no good. I only thought her more bewitching than ever before in her tender kindliness,--yes, even in all her dear, child-like, awkward attempts to reconcile what in the very nature of things is irreconcilable.
"'For a while I shall be very wretched; but you know me well enough to feel sure that I shall not go through life hanging my head, any more than I shall now butt that same head against the wall. I trust that the time will come when I shall be of some use to you, my dear old friend, and, it may be, to her; but at present I am good for nothing.
"'It is best that I should retire into the background. To-morrow I leave Berlin. Forgive me for finding it impossible to take leave of you in person, and believe in the faithful devotion of yours always,
"'G. Von Sydow.'"
After the old lady had finished the reading of the letter, not without a certain pathetic emphasis, she looked up. Erika's face was bathed in tears. Her grandmother was dismayed, and after a pause began again, but in a very different and a very gentle tone.
"This affair annoys me excessively, Erika."
The girl nodded.