In the meantime the happiness which only young hearts, or such as have long retained their youth, can appreciate, was, as I have said, but of brief duration. The singular change in Constance's manner towards me, plucked me from my heaven; and I tortured my brain in the effort to discover what cause had brought me into her disfavor. But think as I might, I could find no key to the mystery; and at last I resolved--though a foreboding of evil warned me against it--to have recourse to Pahlen, who, if any one, could solve me the enigma that weighed so heavily upon my foolish head. This ugly old woman had lately been rather more obliging. I had soon discovered that she was extremely fond of money, and I did not hesitate now and then, under one pretence or another, to slip into her wrinkled brown hands two or three of the _thalers_ that I won at the card-table--for naturally enough I had abandoned my resolution to play no more. The glitter of the silver softened her stony old heart; she no longer growled and grumbled when I ventured to speak to her, and once or twice actually brought coffee to my room with her own hands. When I thought that the taming process was sufficiently advanced, I ventured to ask her about the subject nearest my heart--her young mistress. She threw me one of her suspicious looks, and finally, as I repeated my question, puckered her ugly old face into a repulsive grin, and said: "Yes; catch mice with cheese; but you need not try that game; old Pahlen is too sharp for you." What was the game that I need not try? As I could not find a satisfactory answer to this question, I asked the old woman on the following day. "You need not make as if you did not know," she said, with a kind of respect, inspired probably by my innocent manner, which she naturally took for a masterpiece of deception; "I am not going to betray my young lady for a couple of _thalers_. I have been sorry enough, I can tell you, that I helped to clear up this room for you, and she has complained bitterly enough about it." "But, good heaven," I said, "I will cheerfully go back to my old room if the young lady wishes it. I never thought it would be so extremely disagreeable to her if I caught a sight of her now and then. I could not have supposed it." "And that was all you wanted?" asked the old woman. I did not answer. I was half desperate to think that--heaven knows how involuntarily--I had offended her whom I so deeply loved; and yet I was glad to learn at last what my offence was. Like the young fool I was, I strode up and down the great room, and cried: "I will quit this room this very day; I will not sleep another night in it; tell your young lady that; and tell her that I would leave the castle this very hour, only that I do not know what to say to Herr von Zehren." And I threw myself into the old worm-eaten, high-backed chair, at imminent risk of its destruction, with the deepest distress evident in my features.