She extricated herself from his clasp, and withdrew her hand from his. "It will pass," she said, turning from him to draw a shawl over her shoulders. "Never mind me. Have you seen him,--I mean Lothar?" "Yes; he looks perfectly unchanged. I shall have him brought here to-day." Again Thea shuddered, and for a moment her look was fixed and wild. Bernhard tried again to draw her to him, but she pushed him away. "Leave me! leave me!" she cried. "Oh, my God!" And she burst into a passionate fit of sobbing. Bernhard turned away and walked to the window. He felt that all his doubts would have vanished like morning mists if Thea had met him as usual and wept out her pain and grief upon his breast. Now they arose again before him, and took firmer, clearer shape. For a few moments he stood motionless at the window, then suddenly he approached Thea again. "You know why Lothar shot himself?" he asked, in a voice that sounded hoarse and unlike his own. She bent her head lower upon her hands and made no reply. "He lost a large sum at play last night," Bernhard continued. "But----" Then Thea looked up. For an instant her face looked transfigured with hope, like that of a criminal reprieved when under sentence of death. Involuntarily she seized Bernhard's hand, and asked, with a passionate excitement such as Bernhard had never before known her to express, "Do you believe that that was why he shot himself? Do you believe it? Can it be?" Her eyes as she looked up at him were full of imploring anguish, and he, in his turn, thrust away her hand, and said, in a cold, hard voice, "No! I see you do not believe it, and I--neither do I believe it!" At this moment Alma entered with Herr von Rosen, who had come over immediately upon hearing the sad news. This put an end to Bernhard's and Thea's _tête-à-tête_, and neither of them at this time could have wished it prolonged. Nor was there any opportunity for renewing it during the next few days. The dowager Countess had hastened to Eichhof upon hearing of her son's sudden death, and her grief and suffering were of so exacting a nature as to employ the time and energies of at least one member of the family, and sometimes several of them, all the time. She called herself the unhappiest, the most sorely tried of women; but when Bernhard proposed that she should remain at Eichhof with Thea, she thought it but right to inform him that she had been offered the position of abbess in the aristocratic institution of B----, and that she intended to accept it and retire thither as soon as possible, since it seemed to offer her the advantages to which her birth and rank entitled her. Thea suffered terribly, but she was cold and repellant towards Bernhard, who was very much occupied and rather avoided her than otherwise. The physician shook his head; he was far from satisfied with his patient's condition, although he still maintained that she was only suffering from prolonged nervous agitation.