“Children, children!” he said, sinking down in a chair, almost as helpless as they were. “Scold us, Paul,” sobbed Kate. “No, rather beat us,” urged Greta; “we have deserved it.” He passed his hand across his brow. It all still seemed to him like a bad dream. “How could this have happened?” he murmured. “Have I watched over you so badly?” “They said they--wanted to--marry us!” Kate gasped out. “When the year of mourning was over, the wedding was to be,” added Greta. “And if they said that, they shall keep their word,” he said, endeavoring to console himself. “Do not kneel to me, children, kneel down before God--you need it. This portrait henceforth shall stand on your little table every night. Will you then still have courage to pursue the path of shame? Good-night.” They rushed after him and entreated him to stay with them, “they were so frightened!” but he disengaged himself gently from them and went up to his garret, where he sat and brooded in the dark. He was so deeply ashamed that he thought he should never more be able to bear the light of day. The next morning he sent for the foreman and paid him off. The good man looked up into his face quite aghast. “But now, Mr. Meyerhofer, when all is going on so well?” he said. “Yes, going on so well,” he murmured, thoughtfully. “Shame added to misfortune!--the man is right.” “Something has upset me,” he then said, “which has given me a disgust for work. Let us leave it for the moment, and when the time comes I will send for you again.” His father bitterly complained over the disturbance in the night. “What were you storming about in the garden?” he asked. “I heard your voice!” “Thieves were after the apples,” replied Paul. The twins had red, swollen eyes, and did not dare to raise them from the ground. “So that’s how fallen girls look,” thought Paul, and promised to be as strict with them as a jailer. But when he spoke harshly to them for the first time, and they looked up at him with a pained, humble glance, like two penitent Magdalenes, he was so much overcome by pity that he folded them weeping in his arms, and said, “Compose yourselves, children; all will yet be well.” He was under the firm conviction that the two Erdmanns would not let the day pass without coming to the Haidehof. “Their consciences will bring them,” he said to himself. He felt so sure of it that after dinner he strongly urged his father, who in his laziness had become very slovenly, to put on his new coat, as visitors of importance were expected. His father yielded, grumbling, and was doubly angry afterwards when he found that the immense exertion had been quite useless. “They will come to-morrow,” said Paul to himself when he went to bed; “they have not had the courage to-day.” But the next day passed, too, without anybody appearing, and so the whole week went by.