"What can you find to like in this fellow, Ella?" her father rallied her. "A man ready to take fire, and clinch his fist upon the smallest provocation. What would you say if I should put my veto upon this foolish betrothal with a young savage who is only half-responsible?" Gabrielle's blush grew deeper, she looked alternately at her father and at her lover, and finally deciding in favour of the latter gently laid her hand upon his arm. "You see, uncle!.... completely routed," exclaimed Oswald, his anger entirely dispelled by this little intermezzo. His voice rang with exultant happiness as he added, "nothing can part us now, Ella--not even a father's veto!" And Ella clung silently to his arm and looked blissfully content. "Poor little comrade!" said Truyn tenderly. Mingled with his emotion there was something of the pity which men of ripe years and experience always feel at the sight of the perfect happiness of young lovers. "Poor little comrade!--well, to win back some share of your favour I will e'en put a good face upon it and comply with the wishes of your tyrant." CHAPTER II. "How can a respectable household put up with such a servant!" thought Truyn, as he waited in the hall of the little Swiss cottage which stood between the park at Schneeburg and the vegetable garden, and had been appropriated to the son of the late owner of the soil. A slatternly woman with a loose linen wrapper hanging about her stout figure had come towards him, and after an affirmative reply to his inquiry if the Count were at home, screamed shrilly: "Malzin! Some one to see you!" and vanished in the interior of the house. An unpleasant suspicion assailed Truyn. "Can that be...." The next moment all else was forgotten in distress at the changed appearance of a fair, pale young man who rushed up to him exclaiming: "Erich!--you here!" "Fritz, Fritz!" said Truyn in a broken voice, fairly clasping his unfortunate cousin in his arms. Of all mortals he who has voluntarily resigned the position in which he was born is the most embarrassing to deal with. He has by degrees broken with his fellows, and, almost like an outcast, seems scarcely to know how to comport himself when accident throws him among his former associates; when he meets one of 'his people' he usually alternates between intrusive familiarity and embittered reserve. There was nothing of all this, however, about Fritz. He was so simple and cordial, that Truyn felt ashamed of having avoided a meeting. Fair, with delicate, slightly pinched features, and large melancholy gray eyes, exquisitely neat and exact in his apparel, he looked from head to foot like a cavalry officer in citizen's dress, and in poor circumstances, that is like a man who knew how to invest with a certain distinction even the shabbiness to which fate condemned him.