"No, my dear George, you must not turn such a look of indignation upon me. I am really your friend; and, as I said to you yesterday, it is no fault of yours, and I frankly ask you to forgive me if I yesterday for a moment made you suffer for what you are entirely innocent of. She has to play her comedies; she has done it from a child. I have indeed often feared that she gets it from her unhappy mother. Many a one has suffered from it, and I not the least; but you I would willingly save. I have often enough warned you indirectly, and now do it plainly. What are you about?" I had, at his last words, hurried across the room and seized my hat, which hung by the door. "What are you about?" he cried again, springing from his chair, and catching me by the arm. "I am going," I stammered, while my eyes filled with tears that I vainly endeavored to repress, "away from here. I cannot bear to hear Fräulein Constance thus spoken of." "And then it would be such a happy opportunity to get away from me too," said he, fixing his large dark eyes upon mine with a piercing look; "is it not so?" "Yes," I answered, collecting all my firmness, "and from you too." "Go then," he said. I moved towards the door, and was feeling for the latch, for my eyes were blinded with tears. "George," he cried, "George!" The tone cut me to the heart; I turned, and seizing both his hands, exclaimed: "No; I cannot do it. You have been so good to me; I cannot leave you of my own will." Herr von Zehren led me gently to the great chair, and paced several times up and down the room, while I buried my head in my hands. Then he stood before me and said: "What did Granow say to you yesterday? Did he slander me to you as he has slandered you to me? Did he warn you against me, as he has warned me against you? No; do not answer; I do not want to know. It is just as if I had been there and heard it all. Every one knows how double-tongued old women talk." "Then it is not true?" I exclaimed, starting from the chair. "Certainly, certainly, it is not true; I never believed it. I did not believe that miserable creature yesterday--not for one moment." "And now only, for the first time?" said he, turning his piercing look again upon me. But I did not again lower my eyes; I met his gaze firmly, and calmly answered: "I will not believe it until I hear it from your own lips." "And if I confirm it, what then?" "Then I will implore you to have nothing more to do with it. It cannot end well, and it fills me with horror to think that it might end terribly." "You think," he said, and a bitter smile contracted his features, "that it would not be a pleasant thing to read in the papers: 'To-day Malte von Zehren of Zehrendorf was condemned to twenty years' hard labor, and in pursuance of his sentence was conveyed to the penitentiary at S., the director of which, as is well known, is the brother of the criminal?' Well, it would not be the first time that a Zehren was an inmate of a prison."