"The Moor returns his thanks," replied Tausdorf laughing, and followed Althea to the window, where she stood with folded hands in deep thought. "Have I understood your heart?" he asked gently and tenderly. "Only too well," she murmured; "and yet in this decisive moment an anxious doubt falls on me, whether I do right in listening to it, and whether it is compatible with my duties towards my child." "Fire and fury, sister!" shouted Netz, impatiently, "I believe you are still coquetting it: by my faith! even the best women can't leave that alone. I fancy when you one day come to the gates of heaven, you'll stand courtesying to St. Peter, and protesting that you don't think it polite to enter, till he hales you in by force. What new difficulty have you been spinning and weaving on the instant?" "My little Henry," lisped Althea, with downcast eyes. "Whose interest, you think, is against this marriage?" said Netz, laughing: "Now that, in good truth, is a little out of reason, for to me it seems as if it would exactly tend to his advantage. But I'll do as though I believed you in it. Where is the boy?" "A prisoner in his room till bed-time." "The devil! Yours is a strict government! But wherefore?" "He spoke contemptuously of the respectable state of citizenship." "Death and hell! By that I see the blood of our family flows in him--And 'tis therefore you have imprisoned the noble fellow! Zounds! I can fancy, then, how you would have managed me, if you had given me your fair hand in marriage: I should never again have got out of the cellar into daylight. No, that won't do; I'll not stand it. I am the boy's uncle, and have also a word to say in his education." He rushed out, but at the door was met by the old Herr von Schindel, to whom he exclaimed, "Your niece has grown restive, and positively won't enter the stall of matrimony; do you teach her better--I go for help:" With two springs he was up the stairs and at Henry's door, while Schindel entered to the lovers. "Do you then doubt my having a father's feeling for Althea's child?" said Tausdorf to the widow, deeply mortified. "It is not that alone," she stammered; "it seems to me as if a second marriage would be a treachery to my first husband; and that one day, in a better world, I should not be able to come before his eyes, if I contracted a fresh union here below." "Fie! fie! niece," cried Schindel, gravely; "so good a Christian, and so little versed in the Bible? Have you not read in the holy scriptures, what sort of answer was given to a similar doubt, and who gave that answer? 'there will no one marry, nor be given in marriage?' and your departed lord will thank Tausdorf, with a brother's love, for having made his Althea happy in the time of her earthly pilgrimage, when he himself was no longer able."