A shadow passed over Leuthold's countenance. "I fear, yes, madam. My wife, unfortunately, had not sufficient affection for our child and myself to endure the deprivations to which the disappointment of our hopes of an inheritance from my brother subjected us. She returned to her father for an indefinite time, and, as she has succeeded in keeping away now from her little daughter for two months, I have great doubts of her return."
"But that is very sad for you, Herr Doctor," remarked the Staatsräthin.
Leuthold passed his hand across his eyes. "It is sad indeed, madam, that I should have made such a choice,--that I should have expended years of love and pains in the attempt to cultivate and train a nature incapable of culture. Mine is the same pain which is experienced by the sculptor who finds a serious flaw in the marble upon which he has spent years of labour. He exhausts himself in the endeavour to shape it according to his ideal, and, just when he hopes for its completion, a dark vein is laid bare by his chisel,--his work is worthless,--he has hoped and laboured in vain!"
The Staatsräthin looked at him with interest, "That is rather coldly put, and yet poetically conceived, sir."
"An artist would not call it cold, madam, for he would know how great the suffering is to which I have ventured to compare my own."
The Staatsräthin assented. Leuthold's manner pleased her more and more. Just then Lena entered, leading Gretchen by the hand, and carrying a brightly burnished lighted lamp, which she placed upon the table.
"Oh, what a charming child!" exclaimed the Staatsräthin in unfeigned surprise.
Her keenly observant eye noticed with pleasure the ray of delight that illumined Leuthold's countenance. "Is she not lovely, madam?" he said, actually glowing with gratified vanity. "You do indeed delight the heart of a father who has seen his child forsaken by her own mother. Yes, she is a treasure. She has the personal beauty that once so attracted me in her mother, and will, I hope, develop a beauty of soul which I failed to find in her mother. She will, in the future, repair all that I have lost. While I have this daughter, I ask of life nothing beside."
The large-hearted Staatsräthin was completely won by a declaration so full of affection. "The man that idolizes his child thus cannot be worthless," she thought.
Leuthold motioned to Lena to take Gretchen away again, and as she did so the Staatsräthin remarked, as if casually, "There cannot be much room in your heart, filled as it is with love for such an angel, for poor, pale little Ernestine."