Otto immediately hired a carriage, and reached the hall just about dinner-time. In the interior court-yard stood two calashes and an Holstein carriage; two strange coachmen, with lace round their hats, stood in animated discourse when Otto drove in through the gate. The postilion blew his horn.

 

"Be quiet there!" cried Otto.

 

"There are strangers at the hall!" said the postilion; "I will only let them know that another is coming."

 

Otto gazed at the garden, glanced up toward the windows, where mine of the ladies showed themselves only out of a side building a female head was stretched out, whose hair was put back underneath a cap. Otto recognized the grown-together eyebrows. "Is she the first person I am to see here?" sighed he; and the carriage rolled into the inner court. The dogs barked, the turkey-cocks gobbled, but not Wilhelm showed himself. The Kammerjunker came--the excellent neighbor! and immediately afterward Sophie; both exclaimed with smiles, "Welcome!"

 

"See, here we have our man!" said the Kammerjunker; "we can make use of him in the play!"

 

"It is glorious you are come!" cried Sophie. "We shall immediately put you under arrest." She extended her hand to him--he pressed it to his lips. "We will have tableaux vivants this evening!" said she: "the pastor has never seen any. We have no service from Wilhelm; he is in Svendborg, and will not return for two days. You must be the officer; the Kammerjunker will represent the Somnambulist, who comes with her light through the window. Will you?"

 

"Everything you desire!" said Otto.

 

"Do not speak of it!" returned Sophie, and laid her finger on her lips. The mother descended the steps.

 

"Dear Thostrup!" said she, and pressed, with warm cordiality, both his hands. "I have really quite yearned after you. Now Wilhelm is away, you must for two whole days put up with us alone."

 

Otto went through the long passage where hung the old portraits; it was as if these also wished welcome. It only seemed a night full of many dreams which had passed since he was here; a year in the lapse of time is also not so long as a winter's night in the life of man.

 

Here it was so agreeable, so home-like; no one could have seen by the trees that since then they had stood stripped of leaves and covered with snow; luxuriantly green they waved themselves in the sun's warmth, just as when Otto last gazed out of this window.

 

He had the red room as before. The dinner-bell rang.

 

Louise met him in the passage.

 

"Thostrup!" exclaimed she, with delight, and seized his hand. "Now, it is almost a year and a day since I saw you!"

 

"Yes much has happened in this year!" said the Kammerjunker. "Come soon to me, and you shall see what I have had made for pastime--a bowling-green! Miss Sophie has tried her skill upon it."

 

The Kammerjunker took the mother to dinner. Otto approached Sophie.

 

"Will you not take the Kammerjunker's sister?" whispered she.

 

Mechanically, Otto made his bow before Miss Jakoba.

 

"Take one of the young ladies!" said she; "you would rather do that?"

 

Otto bowed, cast a glance toward Sophie; she had the old pastor. Otto smiled, and conducted Jakoba to table.

 

The Mamsell, renowned through her work-box, sat on his left hand. He observed the company who, beside those we have already mentioned, consisted of several ladies and gentlemen whom he did not know. One chair was empty, but it was soon occupied; a young girl, quiet in her attire, and dressed like Louise, entered.

 

"Why do you come so late?" asked Sophie, smiling.

 

"That is only known to Eva and me!" said Louise, and smiled at the young girl.

 

Eva seated herself. It was, perhaps, the complete resemblance of their dress which induced Otto to observe both her and Louise so closely, and even against his own will to draw comparisons. Both wore a simple dark brown dress, a small sea-green handkerchief round the neck. Louise seemed to him enchanting--pretty one could not call her: Eva, on the contrary, was ideal; there lay something in her appearance which made him think of the pale pink hyacinth. Every human being has his invisible angel, says the mythos; both are different and yet resemble each other. Eva was the angel; Louise, on the contrary, the human being in all its purity. Otto's eyes encountered those of Sophie--they were both directed to the same point. "What power! what beauty!" thought he. Her mind is far above that of Louise, and in beauty she is a gorgeous flower, and not, like Eva, a fine, delicate hyacinth. He drew eloquence from these eyes, and became interesting like the cousin, although he had not been in Paris.

 

The Kammerjunker spoke of sucking-pigs, but th............