'Not?' cried Rüstow, who always grew quarrelsome when he was at all worried. 'Now I should have thought her present manner would have been exactly what you would like. According to you, Hedwig was always too superficial and light-minded; now she is growing so wonderfully profound in her feelings that she is forgetting how to laugh. Why, she is never contradictious, never up to tricks of any sort! Upon my word, it is enough to drive one mad!' 'What, that she has given up contradiction, and all her foolish tricks?' Rüstow took no notice of this ironical interruption. He went up to his cousin, and posted himself before her in a menacing attitude. 'What has happened to the girl? What has become of my merry, saucy Hedwig, my madcap who was never weary of frolic and fun? I must and will know.' 'You need not look at me so fiercely, Erich,' said Aunt Lina calmly. 'I have not injured your child in any way.' 'But you know what has brought about the change,' cried the anxious father, in a dictatorial tone. 'You can, at least, explain to me what it all means.' 'I cannot do that, for your daughter has not made me her confidante. Don't take the matter so much to heart. Hedwig has certainly grown grave and pensive of late, but you must remember she is about to take a most important step, to leave her father's house and enter upon new relationships and new surroundings. She may have much to fight through and to overcome, but when once she is married, a sense of duty will sustain her.' 'A sense of duty?' repeated the Councillor, petrified with amazement. 'Why, has not this love-affair of hers been a perfect romance? Have not they got their own way in spite of the Countess and of me? Is not Edmund the most tender, the most attentive lover the world ever saw? And you talk about a sense of duty! It is a very excellent thing in its way, no doubt, but when a young woman of eighteen has nothing warmer than that to offer her husband, you may reckon with certainty on a miserable marriage. Take my word for it.' 'You misunderstand me,' said his cousin soothingly. 'I only meant that Hedwig would be brought face to face with life's graver side and with its duties when she goes to live at Ettersberg. The situation does not appear to me so simple, the future so smooth and thornless, as we at first supposed.' Rüstow did not observe that a trap was laid for him, a palpable effort made to lead him from the topic under discussion. He followed up the seemingly careless remark at once, and with some warmth.