"Certainly I will; refer your people to me," said the Freiherr. "But I have one condition to make: we will explain that you are ill, and are to travel in search of health. What your illness is must remain our secret. If you come back well, it need never be known." Johann Leopold passed his hand across his brow and eyes with his own peculiar gesture of weariness. "Magelone must be told." "Least of all Magelone!" cried his grandfather. "If she cannot be spared it always--well, then she must endure it; but let her hope as long as she can. She deserves it at your hands. She loves you. I saw that plainly while you were ill." The young man smiled bitterly again, arose, and went to the window. Before him lay the park, with its lindens of a hundred years, which had shaded his childish games; beyond it soared the mountain-peaks,--Eichberg, Klettberg, and Elbenhöhe,--with their magnificent forests and hunting-grounds, which he had been taught from infancy to regard as his inheritance, and for the care of which he felt himself responsible, as well as for the villagers nestling in the valley under the protection of the ancient castle of Dönninghausen. To resign it all voluntarily was hard; and yet how much harder was it to resign his claim--superficial although it were--upon Magelone! He had long been convinced that it must be done, but he had always shrank and hesitated. Ludwig's words--'Never delay where the knife is necessary'--occurred to him. He would not any longer keep himself and others in useless suspense. "Grandfather," he said, in a tone of forced composure, "it would be best to put a speedy end to it all,--to give me up as a forlorn hope. Let the heirship devolve upon Otto; and Magelone----" "The heirship to Otto!" the Freiherr interposed, in a voice of thunder. "Never, so long as I have a voice in the matter! That would be certain ruin for Dönninghausen. Remember. Scarcely two years ago Otto made away with everything he had inherited from his mother, and think of the debts I have paid for him since!" "That is over, sir," said Johann Leopold. "Since Otto promised you he would never play again, he has never--my information comes from a trustworthy source--touched a card."