v. Tilling at a distance, who was galloping down the ride in our

direction.

“Cousin! you are my good ally, are you not? You know that I take all possible trouble to dispose Lilly in your favour?”

“Yes, my noblest of cousins.”

“Only yesterday evening I was again vaunting your good qualities, for you are really a grand young fellow--pleasant, discreet----”

“Whatever do you want with me?”

“Just to give your horse the spur and ride off.”

Tilling was by this time quite near. Conrad looked first at him, then at me, and, without speaking a word, nodded at me with a smile, and went off as if he was flying for his life.

“This Althaus again” were Tilling’s first words after he had turned round, so as to ride on by my side. In his tone and his manner jealousy was plainly expressed.

I was pleased at it.

“Is he so out of patience at seeing me? or has his horse run away?”

“I sent him away, because----”

“Countess Martha, odd that I should meet you with this Althaus, of all people! Do you know that the world says he is in love with his cousin?”

“It is true.”

“And is trying to win her favour?”

“That is true also.”

“And not without hope?”

“Not quite without hope.”

Tilling was silent. I looked into his face with a happy smile.

“Your look contradicts your last words,” he said, after a pause. “For your look seems to me to say ‘Althaus loves me without hope’.”

“He is not in love with me at all. The object of his suit is my sister Lilly.”

“You take a weight off my heart. This man was one of the reasons for my wishing to leave Vienna. I could not have borne to be obliged to look on.”

“And what other reasons had you besides?” I interposed.

“The fear that my passion was increasing; that I should not be able to conceal it longer; that it would make me ridiculous and miserable at the same time.”

“Are you miserable to-day?”

“Oh, Martha! Since yesterday I have been living in such a tumult of feeling that I am almost beside myself. But not without the fear, as when one has too sweet a dream, that I may suddenly awake to a painful reality. I have no right to expect any return for my love. What can I offer you? To-day your favour smiles on me, and lifts me into the seventh Heaven. To-morrow, or a little later, you will withdraw from me again this undeserved favour, and plunge me into an abyss of despair. I know myself no longer. How hyperbolically I am speaking--I who was formerly such a calm, circumspect man, an enemy of all extravagance. But in your presence nothing seems to me extravagant. In your power it lies to make me happy or wretched.”

“Let me speak of my doubts too. The princess ----”

“Oh, has that chatter come to your ears too? There is nothing in it, nothing at all.”

“Of course you deny; that is your duty.”

“The lady in question, whose heart is now imprisoned, as is well known, in the Burg theatre, and how long will that last?--for it is a heart which gives itself away pretty often--this lady is one about whom the most circumspect gentleman need hardly observe the silence of death. So you are doubly bound to believe me. And, besides, should I have wished to leave Vienna if that rumour had had any foundation?”

“Jealousy does not draw reasonable inferences. Should I have ordered you to remain here if I had been near making up a match with my cousin Althaus?”

“It is hard for me, Martha, to be riding so quietly by your side. I should like to fall at your feet, to kiss at least your beloved hand.”

“Dear Frederick,” said I tenderly, “such outward acts are not needed. One can embrace with words too, and caress all the same as----”

“If we kissed,” he said, concluding the sentence.

At this last word, which thrilled through us both like an electric shock, we looked for some time into each other’s eyes, and found that one can kiss even with looks.

He spoke first. “Since when?” I understood the unfinished question well enough.

“Since that dinner at my father’s,” I replied. “And you?”

“You? That _you_[6] does not suit, Martha. If I am to answer the question it must be put in a different form.”

“Well? and _thou_?”

“I? Just since the same evening. But it was not so clear and decided to me till at the deathbed of my poor mother. With what longing did my thoughts turn to you!”

“Yes, that I understood. But you, on the contrary, did not understand what the red rose meant which was wound in among the white flowers of death, or else, when you came here, you would not have so avoided me. I do not yet comprehend the reason of this holding off, and why you wanted to go away!”

“Because my thoughts never rose to the hope that I could win you. It was not till you ordered me, by the memory of my mother--ordered me to come to you, and to remain near you--that I understood that you were favourably disposed to me, that I might dedicate my life to you.”

“So if I had not myself ‘thrown myself at your head,’ as the French say, you would not have troubled yourself about me?”

“You have a great many admirers. I could not mix myself up among these swarms.”

“Oh, they do not count for anything. Most of them have no other object except as to the rich widow.”

“Don’t you see? That word describes the bar which kept me from paying my court--a rich widow, and I quite without fortune. Better perish of unrequited love than be despised by the world, and especially by the woman I adore, for the very thing which you have just imputed to the crowd of your suitors----”

“O you proud, noble, dear fellow! I should never have been capable of attributing one low thought to you.”

“Whence this confidence? You really know me so little as yet.”

And now we began questioning each other further. On the question “Since when” had we loved each other, followed now the discussion “Why?” What had first attracted me was the way in which he had spoken of war. What I had thought and felt in silence--believing that no soldier could think any such thing, much less utter it--he had thought more clearly than I, felt it more strongly, and uttered it with perfect freedom. Then I saw how his heart towered above the interests of his profession and his intellect above the views of the period. It was that which, so to speak, laid the foundation of my devoted love for him; and besides that there were innumerable other “becauses” in reply to the “why”. Because he had so handsome and distinguished a presence; because in his voice there thrilled a soft yet firm tone of its own; because he had been such a loving son; because....

“And you--why do you love me?” I asked, interrupting myself in thus rendering my account.

“For a thousand reasons and one.”

“Let us hear. First the thousand.”

“The great heart; the little foot; the lovely eyes; the brilliant mind; the soft smile; the lively wit; the white hand; the womanly dignity; the wonderful----”

“Stop! stop! Are you going through the whole thousand? Better tell me the one reason.”

“That is no doubt simpler, since the one in its power and irresistibleness embraces all the others. I love you, Martha, because I love you. That is why.”

* * * * *

From the Prater I drove direct to my father’s. The communication which I had to make to him would, I foresaw, give rise to unpleasant discussions. Still I wanted to get over these inevitable unpleasantnesses as quickly as possible--and I preferred to face them at once under the first impression of the happiness I had just won. My father, who was a late riser, was still sitting over his breakfast, with the morning papers, when I ran into his study. Aunt Mary was present also, and likewise busy over the paper.

On my rather hasty entrance my father looked up in surprise from the _Presse_, and Aunt Mary laid down the _Fremdenblatt_.

“Martha! so early, and in riding dress! What does that mean?”

I embraced them both, and then said, as I threw myself into an arm-chair:--

“It means that I am come from a ride in the Prater, where something has taken place which I wanted to tell you about without delay. So I did not even take the time to drive home and change my dress.”

“And what is this thing so important and so pressing?” asked my father, lighting a cigar. “Tell us, we are all anxiety.”

Should I beat about the bush? Should I make introductions and preparations? No, better leap in head over heels, as people leap from a spring-board into the water.

“I have engaged myself----”

Aunt Mary flung her hands over her head and my father wrinkled his brow.

“I hope, however, not----” he began, but I did not let him finish.

“Engaged myself to a man, whom I love from my heart, and reverence, and of whom I believe that he will make me completely happy--Baron Fried. v. Tilling.”

My father jumped up!

“What do you say? After all I said to you yesterday.”

Aunt Mary shook her head.

“I would sooner have heard a different name,” she said. “In the first place, Baron Tilling is not a match for you, he cannot have anything; and, in the second, his principles and his views seem to me----”

“His principles and views coincide entirely with mine; and as to looking for ‘a match,’ as it is called, I am not disposed to do so. Father, dearest father of mine, do not look so cruelly at me, do not spoil the great happiness which I feel at this moment! my good, dear, beloved papa!”

“Well, but, my child,” he replied, in a somewhat softened tone, for a little coaxing used always to disarm him, “it is nothing but your happiness which I have in view. I could not feel happy with any soldier who is not a soldier from his heart and soul.”

“But really you have not to marry Tilling,” remarked Aunt Mary, in a very judicious way. “The soldiership is the least matter in question,” she added; “but I could not be happy with a man who speaks in a tone of such little reverence of the God of the Bible, as the other day----”

“Allow me, dearest Aunt Mary, to call your attention to the fact that you also have not to marry Tilling.”

“Well, what a man chooses is a heaven to him,” said my father with a sigh, sitting down again. “Tilling will quit the service, I suppose?”

“We have not mentioned the subject as yet. I own I should prefer it, but I fear he will not do so.”

“To think,” sighed Aunt Mary, “that you should have refused a prince; and now, instead of raising yourself, you will come down in the social scale.”

“How unkind you are, both of you, and yet you say you love me. Here I come to you, the first time since poor Arno’s death, with the news that I feel perfectly happy, and instead of being glad of it, you try to embitter it with all kinds of matters--militarism, Jehovah, the social scale!”

Still, after half-an-hour or so, I had succeeded somehow or other in talking the old folks round. After the conversation he had held with me the day before, I had expected my father’s opposition to be much more violent. Possibly if I had only spoken of projects and inclinations he would have still striven hard to quench such projects and inclinations; but in presence of the _fait accompli_ he saw that resistance could not be of any further use. Or, possibly, it was the effect of the overflowing feeling of bliss which must have been sparkling in my eyes and quivering in my voice which chased away his annoyance and in which he was obliged against his will to take a sympathising part--in fine, when I stood up to go he pressed my cheek with a hearty kiss, and made me a promise that he would come to my house the same evening, and there salute his future son-in-law in that capacity.

How the rest of the day and the evening passed I am sorry to find not described in the red book. The details have escaped my recollection after so long a time. I only know they were delightful hours.

At tea I had the whole family circle assembled round me, and I presented my Fried. v. Tilling to them as my future husband.

Rosa and Lilly were delighted. Conrad Althaus cried “Bravo, Martha! And now, Lilly, you take a lesson!” My father had either overcome his old antipathy, or he managed to conceal it for my sake; and Aunt Mary was softened and touched.

“Marriages are made in Heaven,” she said, “and every one’s lot is according to His will. You will be happy if you have God’s blessing, and I will pray continually that you may have it.”

The “new papa” was presented to son Rudolf too, and it was to me a moment of peculiar delight and joyful anticipation when the dear man took up my dear child in his arms, kissed him warmly, and said: “Of you, little fellow, we two will make a perfect man”.

In the course of the evening my father put his idea about quitting the service into words.

“You will give up your profession, Tilling, I suppose? As you are already not in love with war.”

Tilling threw his head back with a gesture of surprise.

“Give up my profession! Why, I have no other! And a man need not be in love with war to perform his military duty, any more than----”

“Yes, yes,” my father interposed, “that is what you said the other day--any more than a fireman need be an admirer of conflagrations.”

“I could bring forward more instances. No more than a physician need love cancer or typhus, or a judge be an especial admirer of burglaries. But to give up my way of life? What motive is there for that?”

“The motive,” said Aunt Mary, “would be to spare your wife the life of a garrison town, and to spare her anxiety in case of a war breaking out--though such anxiety is, to be sure, nonsense, for if it is decreed to any one to live to be old, he lives so, in spite of all dangers.”

“The reasons you have named would no doubt be weighty. To keep the lady who is to be my wife from all the unpleasantnesses of life, as far as possible, will certainly be my most earnest endeavour; but the unpleasantness of having a husband who would be without any profession or business would, I am sure, be even greater than those of garrison life. And the danger that my retirement might be charged against me by any one as laziness or cowardice would be even more terrible than those of a campaign. The idea really never occurred to me for a moment; and I hope not to you either, Martha?”

“But suppose I made a condition of it?”

“You would not do so. For otherwise I should have to renounce the height of bliss. You are rich. I have nothing except my military standing, and the outlook to a higher rank in the future; and that is a possession I will not give up. It would be against all dignity, against my ideas of honour.”

“Bravo, my son! Now I am reconciled. It would be a sin and an outrage against your profession. You have not much farther to go to be colonel, and will certainly rise to general’s rank--may at last become commandant of a fortress, governor, or minister of war. That gives your wife also a desirable position.”

I remained quite silent. The prospect of being a commandant’s lady had no charms for me. It would have better suited me to have spent my life with the man of my choice in retirement in the country; but, still, the resolution he had just expressed was dear to me, for it protected him from any stain of the suspicion which my father nourished against him, and which would certainly have clung to him in the eyes of the world.

“Yes, quite reconciled,” my father went on, “and rightly too: for I believed it was chiefly for that purpose---- Now, now, you need not look in such a rage--I mean _partly_, for the purpose of withdrawing into private life; and that would have been very unfair of you. Unfair too towards my Martha--for she is the child of a soldier, the widow of a soldier; and I don’t believe that she could love a man in civilian’s costume for a continuance.”

Tilling was now obliged to smile. He threw me a look which said plainly “I know you better,” and answered aloud: “I think so too; she really only fell in love with my uniform”.