"Sit still where you are, Herr Schoepf," he said. "Stay here where it is cool until you are thoroughly rested. Meantime I will go and find the girl, and talk to her. She has a liking for me, possibly because I have never tried to win her favor."
With these words he left the old gentleman. He first searched through the house and garden after the frightened bird, but finally had to make up his mind to go into the wood after her.
After much unsuccessful searching and calling, he finally saw her white face and red hair shimmering from out the green shadows, in a little cleared spot on the gentle slope of the grove, from which she could command a view of the entrance of the park.
"What a trouble you are making, Zenz!" he shouted to her. "What are you running about in the lonely wood for all the forenoon, when there is enough to be done in the house? Old Katie has worked as hard to find you as if you had been a needle in a haystack."
The girl had hastily sprung from the mossy seat on which she had been crouching, and seemed to be holding herself in readiness to dart away. Her round cheeks had suddenly flushed crimson.
"Is he still there?" she asked.
"Who? Don't be so childish, Zenz. The idea of running away from a good old man, as if he were Satan himself!"
"I won't go home till he has gone," she said, with a defiant shake of her head. "I know what he wants. He wants to lock me up in his hateful, lonely house, where no sun or air gets in. But I have never done him any wrong, and I won't go--I won't bear it--I'd rather have him kill me right here."
"You're out of your senses, girl! Do you know him? What do you know about him?"
She did not answer immediately. He saw how wildly her young breast heaved, how her eyes were fixed on the ground, and how her teeth bit the little twig she held in her hand.