After dinner he went to see the governess of the Institute, and asked her to allow Gretchen to take a pleasure-trip of a few weeks with him,--a request that was readily granted, although madame declared that she could not tell how she should do without Gretchen so long. "For I assure you," said she, "that Gretchen has richly rewarded us for our trouble. When she really leaves me, she will carry a large piece of my heart with her."
"Oh, how can I thank you?" cried Gretchen, throwing herself into her kind friend's arms.
Leuthold was deeply troubled. Should he snatch this child from the soil into which she had struck root so securely, and where she had blossomed so fairly in the sunshine of peace and good will? And yet could he leave her here to lose her forever? If justice should pursue him to America, he never could send for his daughter without betraying his place of refuge. She was his child. He had a sacred claim upon her, and, since he had seen her again, was less able than ever to do without her. She should share his fate.
While he was in the parlour of the Institute, the old lady who had been his travelling companion, and who had passed the whole day with her daughter, entered, and was charmed to meet him again, only regretting that they were not to continue their journey together that evening.
Madame invited him to return to tea,--an invitation that he could not refuse,--and he left the house for awhile for a walk with Gretchen. The girl's delight knew no bounds when she found herself promenading the streets upon her father's arm. She had on her prettiest bonnet and her best dress,--she wished to be a credit to her father and to please him, and she entirely succeeded. She was charming. Leuthold regarded her with increasing admiration, and his busy mind began to weave fresh plans for the future out of her brown hair and long eyelashes. The world stood open for this angel, might she not pass scathless through it with a father who had been proscribed? Who could withstand those half-laughing, half-pensive gazelle-eyes, and those pouting lips; pleading for a father?
As she walked beside him thus, her elastic form lightly supported upon his arm, prattling on with all the grace of a nature full of sense and sensibility, he too began to smile and to revive. He might be most wretched as a man, but he was greatly to be envied as a father.
Gretchen interrupted his reverie. "Father," she said in a low voice, "when I was a little child, you never liked to have me speak of my mother. But I want very much to know what became of her after she married that head-waiter. Will you tell me to-day?"
"I can tell you nothing,--I know nothing of her since she left Marburg, after her father's death. At the time of the divorce she sent me the sum that she was to contribute to the expenses of your education, and her coarse husband permitted no further correspondence between us. He sent back to me unopened every letter in which I tried to arrange matters more methodically. I learned through a third person that she had left Marburg. I do not know where she is living now."
Gretchen shook her head and said nothing.
"I look like you, father, do I not?" she asked anxiously. She did not want to resemble her faithless mother in anything.