"You know," he said kindly, but gravely, as if to a child, "that I do not like to have you undertake to decide upon matters of which you understand nothing."
Angelika looked down, and a tear trembled upon her long eyelashes.
"What is it?" asked Moritz soothingly, and drew her towards him,--"tears? And why not? Nothing more than a dewdrop in the bosom of a rose,--nothing more." He brushed away her tears, and she smiled at him again.
"It is well for you, my son," said the Staatsräthin gently, but gravely, "that your wife's heart is so warm that the frost made in it by unkind words melts to tears and does no further injury."
Moritz looked at his mother-in-law, and then at his wife.--"Angelika, was I unkind?"
Angelika shook her fair curls and said, in a tone which told all the sweetness of her childlike disposition, "No, Moritz, you were right."
"There, mamma, that is a true woman as she comes from the hand of her Creator to be a blessing to the man to whom she belongs," cried Moritz, with a fond look at his wife.
The Staatsräthin stood beside them, her eyes resting with unspeakable affection upon her child, but there was a strange mixture of delight and anxiety in her heart.
"This youthful devotion is very beautiful, but, when its first fervour has passed, nothing remains of the bridegroom but the lord and master of the wife, who is oftentimes as unhappy a slave as she is now a happy one." Such thoughts passed through the mother's mind, and she sighed.
Meanwhile, Johannes had been talking in a low voice with Heim and Hilsborn about the contents of a letter which Heim had handed him to read. "Then, Father Heim, that is settled," he said.