However that may be, I gradually got rid of my feeling of shame, and behaved as if I had a right to so much youth and beauty. My old sister's attitude was touching, even though she was the only one whom my marriage would directly injure. On my wedding day she was to retire from Ilgenstein to be shelved at Gorowen, a family home of ours for maiden ladies and dowagers. She shed streams of tears, tears of joy, and declared her prayers had been heard, and she was in love with Iolanthe before she had seen her. But what would Puetz have said, Puetz who had always wanted me to marry and had never got me to? "I'll make up to his son for it," I thought. I wrote Lothar a long letter. I half begged his pardon for having gone a-wooing in his enemy's house and expressed the hope that in this way the old breach would be healed. I waited a long time for his answer. When it came, just a few dry words of congratulation and a line to say he would delay his return until after the wedding day, since it would pain him to be at home on that joyous occasion and yet not be able to be with me. That, gentlemen, piqued me. I really liked the boy, you know. Oh, yes--and Iolanthe troubled me. Troubled me greatly, gentlemen. She showed no real delight, you know. When I came, I found a pale, cold face. Her eyes seemed positively blurred by the dismal look in them. It was not until I had her to myself in a corner and got into a lively talk that she gradually brightened and even showed a certain childlike tenderness toward me. But, gentlemen, I was so nice. Awfully nice, I tell you! I treated her as if she were the famous princess who could not sleep with a pea under her mattress. Every day I discovered in myself a new delicacy of feeling. I became quite proud of my delicate constitution. Only sometimes I yearned for a naughty joke or a good round curse word. And that constantly having to be on the watch-out was a great exertion, you know. I'm a warm-hearted fellow, I'm glad to say, and I can anticipate another person's wants. Without any fuss or to-do. But I was like a blindfolded tight-rope dancer. One misstep on the right--one misstep on the left--plop!--down he falls. And when I came home to my great empty house, where I could shout, curse, whistle, and do, heaven knows what else, to my heart's content without insulting some one or setting some one a-shudder, a sense of comfort tickled me up and down my backbone, and I sometimes said to myself: "Thank the Lord, you're still a free man." But not for long. Nothing stood in the way of the wedding. It was to take place in six weeks.