Thea had retained sufficient self-possession to tell the servant that her brother-in-law was ill, and to order a carriage for him; and then, like some scared bird, she had flown through the castle, and taken refuge in the conservatory adjoining the drawing-room. Here she sank upon a seat,--the same seat where she had so often sat with Bernhard before their marriage. She pressed her hands upon her throbbing heart, and then upon her eyes, which were dry, hot, and tearless. Could all that had happened in the last hour be real? The wild, insane words in which Lothar had told her of Werner's love and of his own still rang in her ears. Could such things be? Had she in her utter unconsciousness so deceived herself? Or had Lothar actually spoken in the delirium of fever? She sighed heavily. These questions, press upon her as they might, vanished before that other: Was it possible that she had lost Bernhard's heart,--nay, that perhaps she had never possessed it,--that he had deceived her from the first? "No," her own heart answered, "that cannot be! And yet----" She selected a letter from among those she had gathered up from her table and brought hither with her, and read it once more. It was from Adela Hohenstein, and addressed to Alma, who had taken it from the post on her way to Eichhof that morning, and had read it in the carriage. She had been unable to conceal from her sister the agitation its contents had produced. Thea had questioned her, suspecting that she had heard some news of Bernhard, and Alma had finally been induced to show her the letter. Adela wrote in her usual thoughtless harum-scarum way all that she had heard and seen of Bernhard. She had frequently, at the house of one of her relatives, met Bernhard and Julutta Wronsky together, and her letter was evidently written in the first flush of her anger after one of these occasions. "Let me tell Thea that for at least a year she ought never even to condescend to look at that husband of hers," she wrote upon the last page, "and then perhaps he may come to learn that she is a thousand times prettier and better and lovelier than this detestable Frau von Wronsky. For I have learned thus much of the world, that men like to be ill-treated; they make all the good women unhappy, but they will lay down their lives for the worthless ones. Papa is the only exception; it does not spoil him to be loved and petted. He is kinder and dearer than words can tell; but all other men are monsters, your Bernhard as well as the rest." Then there was a postscript: