“Have you found your dream, then, sir?” inquired Ulrich, tossing back the long, unkempt hair which he persisted in wearing, albeit it troubled him not a little, for ’twas constantly falling in his eyes.
“I believe I have,” replied Conrad. Whereupon he went on to tell of the young lady whom he had seen copying Carlo Dolce’s picture of Innocence. While he was speaking a faint tinge of red spread over Ulrich’s cheek; for Moida had written that his sister was making a copy of this very painting. Suddenly he laid his pencil aside and rose to his feet. Conrad observed him in silence, but without any air of contempt; if he did not pray himself, he respected none the less those who did, and the monastery bell was ringing the Angelus. As Ulrich murmured the prayer he could not help thinking that likely at this very moment Moida was saying it also.
When the sound of the bell died away Conrad passed with him into the tower, where they began examining its faded frescos.
“These must have a strange effect on you,” remarked the former. “Doubtless yonder barely perceptible figure of a lady stretching forth her hand and clasping another hand—her lover or husband, perhaps—was one of your ancestresses!”
“Well, it is indeed sad for me to view such ruin and decay in the place where myself and so many of my name were born,” answered Ulrich. “I feel all the while as if I were moving about among ghosts. But then ’tis many, many years since Loewenstein was anything better than what it is to-day. The wind, I have heard my dear mother say, used to blow in through the chinks in the wall and rock my cradle.” Here the poor fellow gave a rueful smile. “You see,” he continued, “old families die hard. It often takes them more than one generation to get down to the bottom of the hill. Why, my parents were little better off than the owls when they inhabited this ruin; and ’twas high time to quit it when they did. But we are out at last on the broad world, and I can truly say I thank God that a man like yourself has bought my ancestral home. Again let me thank you, sir, thank you from the bottom of my heart, for your kindness in giving me employment.”
These words, uttered in a frank, manly tone, pleased Conrad, who, when he first met the young artist, had taken him for a silly fellow that was clinging to the shadow of a great name while too proud to do any work. Ulrich certainly had rather a haughty mien; but, thanks to the girl to whom he was betrothed, he had acquired a good deal of common sense, and, moreover, he had a warm heart. So that Conrad, who pitied his threadbare appearance, soon grew to like him, and during the past week had made the youth take up his quarters with him in the tower.
“Well, I deem it a great piece of good-fortune to have fallen in with you,” said Conrad. “For, although I don’t believe in spirits coming back to molest those who occupy their former abodes, yet, really, to have passed a night here alone might have made my flesh creep. How old is Loewenstein, do you know?”
Ulrich, who knew pretty well the whole history of his house, now proceeded to relate it, briefly of course; yet he told enough to make the other long to hear more. And when he had finished Conrad said:
“Although I am an ardent believer in the aristocracy of nature, nevertheless I feel all the more drawn to you for being a Von Loewenstein.” After a pause he added: “I wonder who my Dream will turn out to be? Will she appreciate dwelling in a castle? Oh! yes, I am sure she will.”
And Conrad went on to tell again of Walburga’s look of rapture as she stood at her easel, and of her tall, graceful figure: