As soon as they were out of the house, he turned suddenly on his companion, and, lingering so as to stay for a few moments in the full moonlight, he said:
"And so you are the betrothed of my old friend's daughter?"
A start and a blush that he could not repress were Egbert's first answers to this abrupt but not unkind question, yet the old man saw that his arrow had perhaps overshot the mark.
"Is it not so?" he said again, but doubtfully now.
"No, mein herr," replied Egbert, with slow and sorrowful composure; "and I fear it never will be."
"You fear, dear friend? Therefore you hope?"
"I have hoped, but I see now how useless it must ever be for me to think of her except as a friend."
"Can I do anything for you that her own favor could not do?"
"I have never asked her for anything, and I never shall, and it suffices that she knows as well as I do what the reason of my silence is."
"Then she does know that you love her?"