"If one rides fast, one may do it in half an hour." "Even through the storm?" "I think so, monsieur." "And how long would the ladies be, driving?" "Like the rider, they must take the longest road over the hill and through the villages, monsieur; that could not take less than an hour, monsieur." Giraldi had taken out his watch and was making a calculation. He put back the watch. "It is just twenty minutes past four. You must be ready in ten minutes, at latest, to take a letter from me to madame at Wissow." "Impossible, monsieur; even this morning, at eleven o'clock, Frau von Wallbach, who was bent upon going away, could not get horses; nobody will supply them, monsieur." "There are the horses which brought me." "Impossible, monsieur; I saw them, and they are quite exhausted. It must be a good, fresh horse, monsieur, a riding horse. There are none such in the stable." "You can find one if I give you another thousand thalers in case madame is back at the castle before six o'clock." "Two thousand, monsieur." "Good. And now, paper and ink--quick!" François brought the required materials in a moment from the next room, and Giraldi was already writing at the table beside his untouched dinner, when François left the dining-room to prepare to earn the second sum, if possible, of which he had serious doubts. Giraldi wrote: "Your drive to Wissow is a subterfuge or a flight. I forgive your vacillation, even your desertion, which can only be a passing error, for the sake of the love which you bear me, and which I bear you. And if your love is extinct (mine is not!) the accompanying letter, which I copy for you (the original, which I cannot trust to the messenger, I retain in my own hands), will awake new flames from the ashes, as he has awoke to life for us, in whose death I could never believe. And as my faith was the stronger, so am I in all things stronger, and would make unrestrained and pitiless use of that strength, no longer for myself, but for our son. You know me, Valerie! As the clock strikes six, I leave the castle for ever, with the Warnow property, which I carry about me to the last thaler, and which now belongs to mother and son, or to the son alone if it should appear that he has no mother. But it cannot, it will not be. I implore to this end the most holy, the sorrow-laden Mother of God. She who bore all the pangs of maternity will guide a mother's heart! "Giraldi. "Warnow. Half-past four in the afternoon." He took a letter from his pocket, which he had received last night when he got home from Philip's party, and had first found time to read in the waiting-room at the railway station, and wrote, with a hand that flew like lightning over the paper: