"No need of that!" Otto rejoined, passionately. "It only needs to show itself simply and seriously for what it is, to bring to shame all the spells of sorcery. Believe me, Johanna, if I could ever find it,--and a single look, a single tone, would reveal it to me,--I should be liberated forever." He had taken hold of the end of her embroidery, thus obliging her to drop her hands in her lap, but she did not venture to speak or to look up at him. "Johanna!" he began again, after a pause, in a suppressed tone. Just then the Freiherr called out, "Come, Otto; I want to take a hand on this last evening with the Wildenhayns and you." The young man arose. "_Du sublime au ridicule_," he said, with his customary smile of gay mockery, as he went to the whist-table, and the evening passed without any further opportunity for confidential words with Johanna. The next morning Aunt Thekla appeared for the first time since the accident at the breakfast-table, in honor of the departing guests, who were all going in the ten-o'clock train from Thalrode. She, too, was full of hope for the invalid, and nodded an assent when the Freiherr insisted that all the family should reassemble in Dönninghausen to celebrate Johann Leopold's recovery. "The Walburgs, of course; if they come, Waldemar will surely not stay away, and the postponed festival will be all the gayer," the old Herr concluded. Magelone looked at Otto; he was calmly sipping his coffee, and she asked herself, with some anxiety, whether he could really bring himself to depart without a word of explanation with her. "Let him--for all I care!" she said to herself, in a burst of offended feeling, and after breakfast she devoted herself to the children, who were brought in to say good-by. At the same time--involuntarily, perhaps--she watched Otto. He spoke with his grandfather and with Aunt Thekla, and then approached Johanna. Resolved to know what they were saying to each other, she playfully chased little Johann Eduard around the room until she came near to the pair, and then, kneeling down to tie on the child's hat more securely, she heard Otto lament that he should hear no tidings of Johann Leopold. "Aunt Thekla never writes," he added, "and grandpapa, only when he wants to read me a homily. Pray, dear Johanna, write to me sometimes, and tell me how the invalid's recovery progresses." In what a tone he spoke! Involuntarily Magelone sprang up to interrupt their conversation, but Eduard called out at this moment, "Come, hurry; it is time." Otto kissed Johanna's hand in farewell, and then turned to Magelone. "_Au revoir_" he said, coldly. Magelone smiled and said as calmly, "_Au revoir_." But when embraces and farewells were over and the three carriages drove out of the court-yard, gazed after by herself and Johanna, she could no longer control herself, but burst into tears, and hurried into the house.