'Yesterday I did all in my power to conceal the truth from you,' pursued the Baron; 'for I myself am perhaps not blameless in this unhappy business. I interfered in a somewhat arbitrary manner with the lives of two human beings, and the fault, if fault it were, has been cruelly avenged. My intentions were indeed of the best. I knew that the young officer to whom my sister was attached, and even secretly engaged, was as poor as herself. He had no fortune to offer her, he could not have married for years, and I had too sincere an affection for Constance to allow her to lose the bloom of her youth, to pine away in anxiety and sadness. When I separated her from her first love, and persuaded her to accept the hand of Count Ettersberg, I did so in the firm persuasion that her attachment had been a mere transient romance, a passing fancy, which marriage would cure at once and effectually. Could I have guessed what deep root the feeling had taken, I would not have interfered. It was only about a year later, when I heard that the regiment had been moved and quartered in the garrison-town nearest to Ettersberg, that I began to divine a danger, and my next visit here transformed the suspicion into a certainty. When the two met, their old love sprang up with fresh intensity, and developed into a passion which bore down all barriers before it. When I discovered this, when I stepped between them and forcibly recalled them to a sense of their duty, it ... it was, I grieve to say, too late!' He paused, and seemed to expect an answer. Edmund withdrew his hand from his uncle's grasp, and stood up. 'Go on,' he said, in a half-stifled voice. 'I have nothing more to add. With this separation all was over. I told you yesterday that the portrait was the portrait of a dead man. He fell the very next year, being one of the first victims of the war which then broke out. My sister never saw him again. Now you know the chain of events, and how it all happened; now try to regain composure. I can understand that it has been a terrible blow to you. You must accept it as a hard decree of Fate.' 'Yes, a hard decree,' repeated Edmund. 'You see that I succumb to it.' 'A man must not so easily succumb to life's first trouble,' said Heideck earnestly. 'You will learn to bear that which must be borne. But now exert yourself, and put from you this useless brooding over the unalterable, the irreparable. Will you not come with me to your mother?' The young Count negatived the proposal with a hasty gesture. 'No, uncle. Do not ask that of me, not that!' 'Edmund, be reasonable. You cannot remain shut up in your rooms for ever.' 'I shall leave them to-day. In a couple of hours I shall start on a journey.' 'On a journey? Where do you mean to go?' 'To town, to Oswald.' 'To Oswald!' cried Heideck, bounding from his seat, and staring at his nephew as though he had not heard aright. 'Are you out of your senses?'