"I should be very sorry, as we should all be," she said. "Not as for the loss of a lover?" he asked again. She cast one quick glance up at him, and then her eyelids drooped. "I cannot feign," she whispered. "But why do you tease me so? What does it matter to you?" She tried to withdraw her hand from his, but he held it fast. "Magelone," he whispered,--and there was a passionate tremor in his voice,--"have you never remembered that if Johann Leopold dies I am his heir? Understand all that this means: you, too, would then be mine!" "Hush!" she interrupted him, half in anger, half in terror. "For God's sake, hush! I will not listen to another word!" And she turned from him and joined his sisters again. But his words had fallen upon fruitful soil. Magelone could not but reflect upon the possibility at which he had hinted, and her fancy painted a future based upon this possibility. There was an actual change in her sentiments. Otto's words on this New Year's evening could not have been uttered in mere dalliance, and her heart responded in louder throbs than hitherto. There came now and then a fleeting consciousness of wrong, when she would weep and consider herself miserably unhappy; but she sought consolation in further imaginings, and when she encountered Otto there was a degree of suppressed emotion in her words and looks which lent a new charm to a creature usually so cool and self-possessed. Otto was, as he confessed to himself, 'awfully in love with her.' Days passed without bringing any essential change in Johann Leopold's condition. "About the same," was the comfortless answer which the Freiherr made every morning to the anxious inquirers of the family, and he sat more silent and gloomy than ever at the head of the table. The only person with whom he sometimes conversed was Ludwig. "If I could only understand what grandpapa can find in that pretentious creature," said Hildegard. "He comes and goes, and gives his opinion quite as if he belonged to us. But where should such people learn to behave themselves?" Magelone said, "So this is the famous foster-brother, Johanna's ideal. The head of a bull-dog on the body of an elephant." Eduard and Karl, after Ludwig had smoked a cigar with them, pronounced him a 'first-rate fellow.' Otto found him tedious, and Aunt Thekla called him the 'gentlest and kindest of men,' while Johanna was constantly hurt and offended by his cynical tone. The second day after his arrival she asked him to take a walk with her. As they walked along under the gray wintry skies, the crows flying cawing overhead and the snow crackling beneath their feet, Johanna said, "This is like the good old times when you used to come home at Christmas for the holidays. Do you remember how we used to make expeditions to see how our summer resorts looked in their winter dress?"