He went towards the house. Elsa was very sorry to spoil the pleasure of these worthy people, but she could not permit herself even so trifling an untruth. The farmer's face clouded, as she explained, with some embarrassment, that during the week she had been at Warnow she had never been beyond the garden, and had not now intended any visit; in fact, that she had not known that these buildings, which she had often enough seen from her window across the fields, were Herr Pölitz's farm. "But," she added, "I should have come had I known, or as soon as I discovered it. For that I give you my word." "We could not have expected it," answered the farmer; "but since you say so, I believe you. But will you not come in!" he added hesitatingly. "Yes, for a minute, to speak to your wife and to see the children." "The children!" As they now stood before the door, the farmer laid his brown hand on her arm, and said in a low voice: "Don't ask after little Carl. Since Christmas he has slept over there in the churchyard. It was a sorrowful Christmas. But in a few days, if God will, we shall again have two." He left Elsa no time to answer, but opened the low house-door--how well Elsa remembered the rattling bell!--called out to his wife, and showed his guest into the parlour on the left. As she went in, the figure of a woman rose up from a stool near the stove, whom Elsa in the dusk, which already prevailed in the room, with its small, dull windows, took for Frau Pölitz, but on coming nearer, saw that it was a young and pretty, but pale and sickly-looking girl. She greeted her in a shy and embarrassed manner, and went away without speaking a word. "A sister of mine," said the farmer, answering Elsa's look, in a low voice and turning away his head. "Will you not sit down? If you will allow me, I will go myself and look for my wife." He went out. Elsa would have preferred to follow him. The close atmosphere in the little, over-heated room nearly took away her breath; and worse than the atmosphere was the sense of misery which was so palpable here, and spoke so distinctly in the farmer's melancholy face, in the girl's white cheeks, in everything on which her glance fell--even in the gloomy silence of the wretched farmyard and in the dilapidated house. Had she fled from the splendid misery of the castle only to find the same helpless sorrow in the little farmhouse! But at least it was not self-made suffering, so that it must awaken compassion, though it could not revolt the soul like what she had just experienced. How could she refuse these poor people the only thing they had asked of her--a tender word of compassion?