Bertha, unconscious of having offended her cousin, could not fail noticing her change of affection towards her, and felt acutely the apparent sting of her ruffled temper. She quietly picked up the cap, and came to render her cousin her usual assistance.
"Away with you, you false one!" said the angry Marie, as she pushed away the helping hand.
"Dearest Marie, have I deserved this of you?" said Bertha, gently, and with tenderness. "Oh, if you but knew how unhappy I am, you would not be so harsh with me."
"Unhappy, indeed!" loudly laughed the other, "unhappy! because the courteous knight only danced with you once, I suppose."
"You are very hard, Marie," replied Bertha; "you are angry with me, and will not even tell me the cause of your displeasure."
"Really! so you do not know how you have deceived me? but you cannot keep your duplicity a secret any longer, which has subjected me to scorn and confusion. I never could have thought you would have acted so ungenerously, so falsely by me!"
The wounded feeling of being out-done by her cousin, and as she thought, despised by Sturmfeder, was again awakened in Marie's mind; her tears flowed, she laid her heated forehead in her hand, and her rich locks fell over and hid her face.
Tears are the symptoms of gentle suffering, they say: Bertha had experienced it, and continued her conversation with confidence. "Marie! you have accused me of keeping a secret from you. I see you have discovered that, which I never could have divulged. Put yourself in my situation--ah! you yourself, cheerful and frank as you are, would never have confided to me your inmost secret. But I will conceal it no longer--you have guessed what my lips shunned to express. I love him! Yes, and my love is returned. This mutual feeling dates much further back than yesterday. Will you hear me? and I will tell you all."
Marie's tears still flowed on. She made no answer to Bertha's last question, who now related to her the way in which they became acquainted with each other in the house of her good aunt in Tübingen; how she liked him, long before he acknowledged his love of her; and narrated many endearing recollections of the past--the happy moments they had spent together, their oath of fidelity at their separation. "And now," she continued, with a painful smile, "he has been induced to join the League in this unhappy war, because we were in Ulm, thinking, very naturally, that my father was embarked in the same cause. He hopes to render himself worthy of me by the aid of his sword; for he is poor, very poor. Oh! Marie, you know my father--how good he is, but also how stern, when any thing runs counter to his opinion. Would he give his daughter to a man who has drawn his sword against Würtemberg? Certainly not. This is the cause of all the trouble and grief I suffer. Often have I wished to unburden my heart to you, but an uncontrollable feeling closed my lips. But now that you know the whole truth, can you still be angry with me? shall I lose my friend also, as well as my beloved?"
Poor Bertha could contain her tears no longer, and wept aloud. Marie, overpowered by the grief of her friend, embraced her cousin with the warm affection of a tender heart sympathising in her painful situation, and all feeling of enmity was in a moment extinguished in her breast.