“You are too bad,” said she. She put on her hat again and secured it; he tried to renew the charming game. “You shall not have another kiss!” cried she, touching her horse with the whip and starting forward.
He soon overtook her, and for a short time they galloped on side by side, lost in each other, eye meeting eye, and often hand touching hand, unheeding the road till both horses suddenly stood still.
“Hallo!” cried the Count. The horses would go no farther; they had long been hardly able to lift their feet out of the swampy ground in which they had now sunk above the fetlock. They were frightened, and tried to turn back. “Pooh!” said the Count; “we know all about that! Wallach has carried me over much worse roads than this; and your horse is much lighter made.”
“Come along!” cried Carla.
They urged their horses on; the terrified brutes flew over the uncertain ground, through pools of water, over a wooden bridge, through water again, till the rising ground grew firmer under their feet.
“We have come across,” said the Count laughing, “but how we are to get back I do not know. We shall have to stay together for good, I believe. Would that please you, my dear girl?”
They were riding now at a foot’s pace to breathe their horses over the higher ground between the brook, which they had just dashed through, and Wissow Head, at the foot of which ran the long line of the railway embankment towards Ahlbeck. The gale was right in their teeth now, so that they felt its full power; and the panting horses were forced to lean forward as if they had a heavy weight behind them, while their riders let the reins hang loosely, not sorry to have their hands at liberty.
“I would pass an eternity with you!” said Carla, as her glowing cheek almost touched his; “but I must be back in an hour.”
“Then, by Jove, we should have to turn back at once; I assure you we cannot get through that brook again; I can hardly see the bridge now, though it is only two minutes since we passed it! it is extraordinary! We shall have to go round by Gristow and Damerow.” He pointed with the end of his whip back towards the chain of hills. “It is a terribly long round.”
“Louisa was so disagreeable.”
“Let her be!”
“She will say such horrid things of us to Edward!”
“Let her!”
“You will have a dreadful scene with Edward!”
“So long as I have you—”
“And when you have me—”
“Carla!”
“Hush! Swear to me that when we get back you will declare our engagement in the presence of the Baroness, of Elsa, and of Signor Giraldi, and that this day month we shall be man and wife!”
“Does it need an oath?”
“I will have an oath.”
She caught his hand and pressed it to her bosom.
“What shall I swear by? by this little hand? by that fair form? by your own sweet self, which I could devour for love?”
“By your honour!”
The voice had no longer its former coaxing tone—the words came with an effort, as if the raging storm oppressed her.
And his answer, too, came hesitatingly and forced: “Upon my honour!”
His eyes, which before had been raised full of passion towards her, avoided hers; she drew her hand hastily out of his, turned her horse sharply round, and galloped away.
The movement had been so sudden that it was not possible for him to have prevented it. But now he even held back his horse, which had also turned and wished to follow its companion.
“Shall I let her go?”
That was his first thought, followed by a stream of others: an unavoidable duel with Ottomar, his own desperate financial position, which would hardly be improved by Carla’s hundred thousand thalers; the recollection of a cousin in Silesia, who would have brought him a dowry of a million, and a marriage with whom had been proposed to him the other day most unexpectedly—he had been for years at daggers drawn with that branch of the family. And then she who was riding away really did not suit him at all; he was merely in love with her, and had never contemplated marriage.
The spirited horse, already startled by the storm, and seeing its companion disappearing in the distance, reared high, and as its rider forced it down, darted forward like an arrow. The Count could not perhaps at this moment have held it in, but he did not wish to do so; he dug in his spurs, and in a few seconds—his hesitation had been only momentary—had overtaken Carla.
“Carla, Carla!”
“Go! You do not love me!”
He spurred forward so that he could catch the bridle of her horse, then turned and so stopped them both.
“You shall not escape me so!”
She looked at him almost with hatred.
“But, Carla, this is madness!”
“I am mad,” murmured she.
“And I am—madly in love with you. But what matter?”
His beautiful white teeth glittered as, putting his arm round her, he laughingly exclaimed: “Will you come with me now?”
“With you? Take me! Take me! I am yours, yours!”
“You foolish darling!”
He pressed kiss after kiss upon her burning lips, then gave back the bridle into her hand, and both turning their horses suddenly round, they rode on side by side in the teeth of the gale—as his horse was the stronger and faster he could do as he pleased—along the gradually sinking ground beside the railway embankment down to Ahlbeck.
They did not speak another word; there was no need.
In Ahlbeck, not far from the beach, stood an inn, which for some years had provided decent entertainment for the summer guests who could not find accommodation at the more important places along the coast, or who were attracted by the quietness and cheapness of the place; and during the last autumn, by the suggestion and greatly assisted by the money of the Count, the little inn had
