"I think not," said Elsa, again looking up. "I think that my father followed a right impulse this morning when he told me everything, as to a friend (and, oh! how thankful I am to him for it, and proud!), told me of his position, of our position--confided to me even that. Oh! I cannot get rid of the thought that it would have been better, that it would have turned out better--for us all, if I had known it, if not from the beginning, at least after that terrible morning. Only a woman's hand could, had it still been possible, have smoothed out the entangled threads of all the faults and follies there and here. What would I not give for the minutes that have been irreparably lost. Ah! I know I should have found the words to touch Ottomar's and your cousin's hearts. Poor Ferdinanda! What must she have suffered? What must she suffer? And my poor Ottomar, too! He is really not so guilty as he perhaps appears to you. It is not your fault that you have not learnt to know him better, that the wish of my heart has not been fulfilled--that you might become true friends. We know now why he shunned you, as indeed he did even his best friends, Schönau and the others--even myself--all of us. And so he has strayed so far, so helplessly away in the loneliness of his heart. And yet I know him from earlier, better days, how tender, how loving and affectionate his heart was; how susceptible he was to all that was beautiful and good, even if he had not the strength to let it ripen in him, to live for that alone. But it must be very difficult in the life that he leads, that he must lead, which I also have led in my way, and have enjoyed myself in it--all these prejudices of rank, these social fetters, which we no longer feel as such, because we have grown up amongst them and can never free ourselves without a hard struggle. And if he failed in this struggle, the strange circumstances of our family will certainly have contributed to it; and, lastly, the rebuff which he has experienced in the person of his father, whom, I know, in the bottom of his heart he deeply reverences. I will not defend him, when, passionate and hot-headed as he is, he rushed out of the house--we none of us knew what he intended--and returned engaged to Carla; but he must not, he cannot be utterly condemned." She gazed anxiously, with clasped hands, into Reinhold's face, a bitter feeling was stirring in him. If she spoke so eloquently of the singular position in which her brother was at the decisive moment, was not this position hers also? Would not she so speak at the last moment for herself? So decide for herself? or was it already on her account that she spoke? Had she so decided? Was he to read her decision between the lines? "I always find it difficult," he said, "to condemn any one--in men's hearts there are so many depths, which no lead can reach--and I have not condemned your brother. On the contrary, I have for his sake and--I cannot deny it--for yours----"