The Freiherr again interrupted his walk. "Advantage!" he growled. "What advantage can India bring to a German physician? But science and trade are the idols of the present age, to which men sacrifice not only human beings but sound sense into the bargain!" With these words he left the room, closing the door behind him with a crash. Aunt Thekla grew pale and red by turns. "Pray do not be offended with my brother," she began. Johann Leopold interposed: "What is there to be offended about?" and he smiled faintly. "You ought to feel flattered, my dear doctor. Grandpapa wishes to keep you here, and is angry to think that you can prefer India to our Dönninghausen. Dönninghausen, you must know, is in the eyes of every member of the family the very ideal of perfection, a paradise on earth." "Not in my eyes," Magelone called out from the other window: it was insufferable to have no one taking any notice of her. "My child, how can you say so?" Aunt Thekla admonished her. "And why not?" Magelone replied. "You all of you have such a passion for the truth, why should I not say that I like Berlin a thousand, nay, a million times better than Dönninghausen,--that I have been better entertained in papa's meanest garrison-town than here?" She yawned. "Every morning when I wake I wonder why the slumber of the Sleeping Beauty does not overtake us." As she said this, she glanced from beneath her drooping eyelids towards Johann Leopold. She wanted to vex him: he had been too disagreeable. But he rose with an air of indifference,--the bell for the second breakfast had just rung,--approached her, and offered her his arm. "With your views I should have you on my side if I were to imitate the doctor and take a flight into the world," he said. "But no more at present; our grandfather must know nothing of it as yet." Again they sat at table side by side as before the accident, and Magelone forced herself to discuss indifferent topics indifferently, but all the while the question would obtrude itself, "What did her cousin's 'into the world' mean?" Was he only jesting, or was it a concealed menace, or the mere whim of a sick man? "He is too indolent to go away,"--it was thus she consoled herself,--"and grandpapa would not allow it, nor would I." So long as she could consider Johann Leopold as securely her own he was more than indifferent to her, but now when it looked as if he were freeing himself, withdrawing from her sway, she wanted at all hazards to hold him fast, and this not from calculation alone. He had repulsed her advances to-day, but ice does not melt beneath the first sunbeam, and her amiability must conquer, like the sunshine, through persistency. If the doctor were only gone! His keen, observing glance made her uncomfortable.