She offered me her hand with an enchanting smile, as if to say: "So that matter is settled, is it not?" Her smile and the touch of her dear hand completed the confusion into which her words had thrown me; but I collected myself with a desperate effort and stammered: "I do not know what you will think of me for allowing you to speak so long on a subject which of course I could not but understand at once; but I cannot tell you how hard it is for me just now to go away from you--to leave you just now. Herr von Zehern expressly charged me to remain here and wait his return, which would happen in a few days, perhaps to-morrow. He no doubt did that--even though he did not say as much--with the best intentions; that you might have some one near you, and might not be left alone in the desolate old house; that----" I did not know how to continue, Constance fixed her eyes upon me with so peculiar an expression, and my talent for fiction having always been of the poorest. "My father has never shown this tender consideration before," she said. "Perhaps he thinks that the older I grow, the more I need watching. You understand me. Or can you have forgotten our discourse of yesterday?" "I have not forgotten it," I cried, springing hastily from the divan. "I will not again become an object of your suspicion. I now leave you, and forever, if you wish it; but others who are assuredly no worthier than I, shall not enjoy an advantage over me; and if they still venture to thrust themselves into your neighborhood, or lurk around like a fox around a dove-cot, they do it at their own peril. I shall not be so considerate as I was that evening." "What do you mean? Of whom are you speaking?" exclaimed Constance, who had also arisen at my last words. She had turned quite pale, and her features had assumed a new expression. "Of whom am I speaking?" I said; "of him who, on that evening when I kept watch at your window, ran from me like a craven; and who last night, as I was coming with your father from Trantowitz, and took the way through the woods alone, tried to conceal himself under the trees; whom I spared out of pity, for I knew that had I betrayed the pitiful wretch, Herr von Zehren would have shot him dead like a dog. Let him take care I do not meet him again in the night or by day either: he will see how much I respect his princeship!" Constance had turned away while I thus gave vent in anger to the despair I felt at leaving the beloved maiden forever. Suddenly she turned her pale face again upon me, with eyes flashing with a strange light, and exclaimed, holding out her hands as if in supplication: