"Just like me!" exclaimed the Freiherr. "Yes, yes, you are my own flesh and blood, a genuine Dönninghausen, and a rare one." He frowned, and for a while they rode along in silence. Then he said, "It is nonsense to leave you out of the family, and a stop must be put to it. I had intended to surprise you at the New Year's dinner with the intelligence that I am going to adopt you and give you my name, that there may be no longer any disagreeable memory between us. Johann Leopold's accident prevented it. I tell you to-day as a reward for your feat of horsemanship." Johanna was startled. At another time she might not have ventured any remonstrance; now the exhilarating effect of her 'feat of horsemanship' had not yet passed off, and she replied, in a low, firm voice, "Thank you, my dear grandfather; I know how kindly you mean this, but I cannot accept your offer." "Johanna!" he growled, interrupting her; but she was not to be intimidated. "No, I cannot!" she repeated. "You pride yourself upon your forbears, and I am as proud of my father and the distinguished name he bequeathed to me. Grandpapa, I thank you from my very soul, but to repudiate this name would be a transgression of the fifth commandment." At first her grandfather's eyes had flashed angrily, but the longer she spoke the gentler became his looks and his air. Johanna never had pleased him so well as at this moment, with her glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes. However she might cling in her childish delusion to the plebeian name, she showed race, Dönninghausen race, and, moreover, her bold, fearless opposition did him good. To every despotic nature there come moments of weariness of a rule over slaves. And the allusion to the fifth commandment had its effect. "If this is the way you take it, I must give up my plan," he said. "I enjoin upon no one any transgression of duty, any sin against God's commands. But you take a wrong view of it. When you marry----" He broke off suddenly, and his face grew dark again. Who in his own sphere would marry the actor's daughter, since she spurned in foolish arrogance the bridge which kind hands would have built for her? But ingratitude was always the reward of kindness. Otto, too, was deaf to his grandfather's well-meant admonitions, and Johann Leopold looked upon all his plans for his future with indifference, if not with aversion. This must not be! The Freiherr returned to the castle in gloomy mood, and had scarcely reached his room when Johann Leopold made his appearance with his letters for the post.