"One moment!" said the General. August obeyed with a face of much embarrassment; the General had come close up to him, and there was in his countenance, not anger, as August assured himself by one nervous glance upwards, but something peculiar; while the deep tones of his voice did not sound peremptory but very strange, thought August. "It is of great importance to me to know where my son is at this moment; Friedrich will perhaps not return immediately, and I am losing precious time. You do not know where Friedrich was to take the things?" The faithful fellow trembled, and his broad, honest face quivered as if tears were not far off; it was only with an effort that he could answer: "Yes, General; Friedrich told me, and he has already two or three times had to take things there when the Lieutenant did not come home; she is called Fräulein Bertalda, and lives in ---- Street, and is, with all due respect, a person who----" "Good!" said the General, "you need not send Friedrich to me now. It is possible that I may require to send you out. Be ready, therefore!" "Breakfast will be ready. General----" "I shall not breakfast to-day." "Fräulein Sidonie was coming to speak to you, sir; can she come now?" "I am very sorry--I am busy--you must tell Fräulein Sidonie." The General turned back into the room. August, in his heartfelt anxiety, longed to say: "If only our young lady were here!" But he did not venture, and so slipped out. "Part of it was true then," murmured the General, "so I suppose the rest will be also." He went up to his writing-table, on which lay an open letter that he had received a quarter of an hour before from Herr von Wallbach. Bending over it in vague bewilderment, supporting himself by one hand on the table, he almost mechanically perused it again, then raised himself with a long-drawn breath and passed his hand over his bushy brows, as if trying to sweep away from his mind, like a bad dream, the fearful thing which he read there. Not merely what he read! between the lines there flitted to and fro terrible things which he himself had mentally inserted whilst he read, as in a bad dream the most dreadful part is not in the images which a terror-stricken imagination calls up, but in the expectation of horrors that are still to come. And yet! what more could come, when an alliance with the Werben family was declined as dishonourable! when satisfaction was denied to a Werben! The latter point, as the most comprehensible, was that to which the unhappy man's wandering thoughts returned and clung most persistently.