Without another thought he hurried down into the park. He saw her at a distance. The dog was lying quiet at her feet; she sat with hands clasped in her lap, and in her half-closed eyes there lay the look of the visionary, dim or far-seeing, always beholding more, or less than the actual. The dog heard his master's step and began to wag his tail, then rose, barking with joy, and ran to meet Oswald. "Ossi!" and the Countess opened her arms to him. Not even from his betrothed had he ever heard a tone of welcome so fervent, and as his mother clasped him close, and kissed him, he felt as if God Himself had laid His hand upon his sore heart and healed it. Gone were all his evil surmises, all fled, leaving only a sensation of angry self-reproach. "You are a day sooner than you said," she exclaimed, kissing him affectionately. "Well, I shall not complain, I am a few hours richer than I thought." "How so, mamma?" "Do you not understand? Do you really not yet know that I am counting the thirty-three days before your marriage--the last days that I shall have you to myself--and that to each one as it goes, I bid a sad farewell? Let me look at you,--my poor child, how you have come back to me! you look as if you had had an illness." "I have felt miserably, really wretchedly ever since I went away," he admitted, speaking slowly and without looking at her. "Uncle Erich diagnosed either the jaundice or intermittent fever, but it does not amount to anything, I am well again." "You do not look so," said the Countess, shaking her head. "Take an arm-chair, that seat is very uncomfortable." He had seated himself upon a low stool at her feet. "No, no, mamma," he replied smiling, "this seat is all right, and now tell me of what you were thinking as I came towards you. Your thoughts must have been very pleasant!" "Must you know everything," she replied gaily, "I had no thoughts,--my dreams...." she patted him lightly on the cheek and whispered--"were of my grandchildren." "Indeed? Perfectly reconciled, then, to my marriage?" "We must learn to acquiesce in the inevitable, and--and--it really would be delightful to have a chubby little Ossi, in miniature, to pet, and cosset." He did not speak, but leaned a little forward and pressed the hem of her gown to his lips. "You goose!" she remonstrated; but when he raised his head she perceived that his eyes were filled with tears. "What is the matter?" "A momentary weakness, as you see," he said with forced gaiety; adding earnestly,--"I am not ashamed of it before you. Of the evil that is in us, we are more ashamed before those whom we love than before all the rest of the world; but of our weaknesses we are ashamed only before those to whom we are indifferent!"