"He never wrote to me anything about her," she thought, in those scrawled letters which always ended, "Denke an mich, Gretchen; und mit herzlichsten Grüssen," &c., &c.
It seemed part of the tall head-forester's pride that he would not permit himself to show any joyful surprise on finding that Grete was in the courtyard. On the contrary, with a curt "'n Abend, Grete," he passed her, and busied himself in seeing that the Count and his guests were being properly attended to by the servants, and that the luggage was being straightway carried in.
Margarethe Halm, with her heart beating worse than ever, came timidly forward, then hung about a little, and at last ventured to say, with a little quivering of the mouth:
"Thou hast never even shaken hands with me, Hermann."
"But thou seest that I am busy, Grete, and—Donnerwetter, idiot, look what you do with the lady's box!—and thou shouldst not have come at such a time, when the Herr Graff and his visitors have just arrived, and expect——"
He proceeded to give some more orders; for the head-forester was an important man in Schönstein, and looked upon the Count's domestics as he looked upon his own keepers. But happening to turn, he caught a glimpse of what suddenly smote down his gruff pride—Margarethe Halm was standing by, with her soft black eyes brimming over with tears. Of course his stalwart arms were round her shoulders in a moment, and he was talking pettingly and caressingly to her, as if she were an infant, with ever so many du's, and klein's, and chen's.
The Count's big mansion, though it looked like a whitewashed cotton-factory outside, was inside very prettily furnished; and the long, low-roofed rooms, with their polished wooden floors and gaily-decorated walls, were very cool and pleasant. There was little garden about the house; the ground behind was laid out in formal walks between avenues of acacias and limes; there was a little pond with a plaster-boy in the centre, who spouted a thin jet of water through a pipe; and there was, at the further end of the trees, an artificial ruin which the previous proprietor had failed to complete when the Count took possession of the place.
"How lovely the village looks in that red light!" said Annie Brunel, as they all went out on the balcony of the room in which dinner had been laid for them.
"But the glory of Schönstein," said the Count, slapping Will on the shoulder—"I say, the glory of Schönstein, my boy, lies in those miles and miles of trees—the deer, my lad, the deer! Ah, Miss Brunel, when I see you take a gun upon your shoulder, and march into the forest with us—like Diana, you know——"
He looked at her with the admiring smile of an elderly Adonis. Had he not the right, now that she had seen his splendour and his wealth? Could he doubt any longer about his chance of winning that white little hand?