"Thus be my past life extinguished by this moment," cried Blanden. "I feel as if, pursued by evil spirits, I entered the sanctuary of a bright temple, and all the gods smiled me a welcome. Sacred be this moment to us: the rustling trees, the parting orb of day be witness of our betrothal!" And again he folded Eva to his heart; she returned his caress amid burning tears, by which the pent-up tumult of her passionate love found relief for itself. Blanden felt too happy; again and again he listened to the assurances of perfect love. They wandered some time longer by the stream in the evening's light, then unconcernedly returned to the party. This want of confusion was indeed ruinous to Eva's character. The Kanzleiräthin explained to her daughter that she must break off her intimacy with Eva, as it was positively astounding what liberties that girl allowed herself. She had always seen that the Kalzow's bringing up was a very sad one, but had not expected that it would bear such ruinous fruits. Salomon suggested to his mother that they had not merely been catching butterflies and gathering flowers, but that the science of nature also possessed other interesting pages which could be studied. Rath and Räthin Kalzow rejoiced silently at the favourable course which this mutual fancy took; at the same time the Rath had some misgivings which occasionally worried him, so that his coughing fits overcame him. "It is quite beautiful," said he, confidentially, several times to his Miranda, "that Eva has conquered him; but who says then that his intentions are serious? She is a poor, middle-class girl; he, a rich, noble landowner, and even although, according to the universal law of the country, nothing stands in the way of such a marriage, yet up to the present time he has made no such declaration. The girl is beautiful as her mother, my poor sister, was." Miranda merely vouchsafed a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders in reply to this eulogium. "Yet beauty," continued the Rath, while setting his cravat to rights, "may suffice for love, but not for marriage, and to one who has knocked about in the world so much as Blanden, one adventure more or less does not matter. In fact, Miranda, if we have allowed Eva to be talked about again all for nothing, it would cause me sleepless nights." Nor could Miranda either really suppress a few slight doubts; she comforted herself, however, with the thought that Blanden would probably remove these doubts himself. Then the Kanzleiräthin, who had just taken a turn with the banker's wife through the hazel bushes, holding a couple of nuts in her hand, came running, almost breathlessly, across the meadow to the married couple. "What do I hear? Why, that is the same Blanden whose name was often mentioned at the time when the seraphic community was talked of? Surely, he was a member of it." "The grass has grown over it long since," said the Regierungsrath, annoyed.