It had not struck nine when I left my carriage at the entry to the Prater Promenade and mounted my horse which had been sent forward with the groom. The weather was springlike and mild—sunless, indeed, but only the milder for that; and, besides, I carried the sunshine in my heart. It had rained in the night; the leaves were adorned in their freshest green, and a smell of moist earth rose up out of the soil.
I had hardly ridden a hundred paces down the promenade when I was aware of the tread behind me of a horse coming on at a round trot.
“Ah, how are you, Martha? I am pleased to meet you here.”
It was Conrad—the inevitable. I was not at all pleased at this meeting. However, the Prater was certainly not my private park, and on such a beautiful spring morning the ride is always full. How could I have been so foolish as to reckon on an undisturbed rendezvous here? Althaus had made his horse follow the pace of mine, and settled himself evidently to be my faithful attendant in my ride. At this time I perceived Frederick v. Tilling at a distance, who was galloping down the ride in our direction.
“Cousin! you are my good ally, are you not? You know that I take all possible trouble to dispose Lilly in your favour?”
“Yes, my noblest of cousins.”
“Only yesterday evening I was again vaunting your good qualities, for you are really a grand young fellow—pleasant, discreet—”
“Whatever do you want with me?”
“Just to give your horse the spur and ride off.”
Tilling was by this time quite near. Conrad looked first at him, then at me, and, without speaking a word, nodded at me with a smile, and went off as if he was flying for his life.
“This Althaus again” were Tilling’s first words after he had turned round, so as to ride on by my side. In his tone and his manner jealousy was plainly expressed.
I was pleased at it.
“Is he so out of patience at seeing me? or has his horse run away?”
“I sent him away, because—”
“Countess Martha, odd that I should meet you with this Althaus, of all people! Do you know that the world says he is in love with his cousin?”
“It is true.”
“And is trying to win her favour?”
“That is true also.”
“And not without hope?”
“Not quite without hope.”
Tilling was silent. I looked into his face with a happy smile.
“Your look contradicts your last words,” he said, after a pause. “For your look seems to me to say ‘Althaus loves me without hope.’ ”
“He is not in love with me at all. The object of his suit is my sister Lilly.”
“You take a weight off my heart. This man was one of the reasons for my wishing to leave Vienna. I could not have borne to be obliged to look on.”
“And what other reasons had you besides?” I interposed.
“The fear that my passion was increasing; that I should not be able to conceal it longer; that it would make me ridiculous and miserable at the same time.”
“Are you miserable today?”
“Oh, Martha! Since yesterday I have been living in such a tumult of feeling that I am almost beside myself. But not without the fear, as when one has too sweet a dream, that I may suddenly awake to a painful reality. I have no right to expect any return for my love. What can I offer you? Today your favour smiles on me, and lifts me into the seventh Heaven. Tomorrow, or a little later, you will withdraw from me again this undeserved favour, and plunge me into an abyss of despair. I know myself no longer. How hyperbolically I am speaking—I who was formerly such a calm, circumspect man, an enemy of all extravagance. But in your presence nothing seems to me extravagant. In your power it lies to make me happy or wretched.”
“Let me speak of my doubts too. The princess ⸻”
“Oh, has that chatter come to your ears too? There is nothing in it, nothing at all.”
“Of course you deny; that is your duty.”
“The lady in question, whose heart is now imprisoned, as is well known, in the Burg theatre, and how long will that last?—for it is a heart which gives itself away pretty often—this lady is one about whom the most circumspect gentleman need hardly observe the silence of death. So you are doubly bound to believe me. And, besides, should I have wished to leave Vienna if that rumour had had any foundation?”
“Jealousy does not draw reasonable inferences. Should I have ordered you to remain here if I had been near making up a match with my cousin Althaus?”
“It is hard for me, Martha, to be riding so quietly by your side. I should like to fall at your feet, to kiss at least your beloved hand.”
“Dear Frederick,” said I tenderly, “such outward acts are not needed. One can embrace with words too, and caress all the same as—”
“If we kissed,” he said, concluding the sentence.
At this last word, which thrilled through us both like an electric shock, we looked for some time into each other’s eyes, and found that one can kiss even with looks.
He spoke first. “Since when?” I understood the unfinished question well enough.
“Since that dinner at my father’s,” I replied. “And you?”
“You? That you6 does not suit, Martha. If I am to answer the question it must be put in a different form.”
“Well? and thou?”
“I? Just since the same evening. But it was not so clear and decided to me till at the deathbed of my poor mother. With what longing did my thoughts turn to you!”
“Yes, that I understood. But you, on the contrary, did not understand what the red rose meant which was wound in among the white flowers of death, or
