of words.

"Ay, upon my veracity! Could I ever have thought that my old eyes would
have beheld Albert von Sturmfeder again! And I verily believe you have
grown handsomer and taller than when I last saw you! Who could have
thought it? Look, he stands like a stick at the door! Well, but who is
it that dares speak thus to my dear young lady? It is not my master,
nor any of his servants! Ay! what does one live to see? Young Albert,
it is you who have been upbraiding my child!"

During this rapid flow of exclamations, Albert in vain sought to escape
from the old woman, and though he determined, in the heat of the
moment, to leave the castle, he felt it unseemly to let her suppose he
had been quarrelling with Bertha. He shook off the grasp which the
nurse had of him, and, in spite of her reproachful smile, took the hand
of Bertha, at the same time pressing it to his heart. A glance from her
eye calmed the tumult of his feelings. But a fresh conflict, a new
embarrassment agitated him. His anger indeed subsided, he felt
convinced that Bertha could not entertain that unkindness towards him
which his heated imagination had conjured up--but how to reconcile it
with his honour, to submit to the shame of being subdued by a squeeze
of the hand, or a glance of the eye, before a witness, was a difficulty
in which pride had its share. He blushed for his weakness, in standing
self-convicted before the old woman; and we have often heard that the
feeling of shame, and the embarrassment of getting out of a scrape,
such as Albert's precipitation had drawn him into, without committing
our honour, is apt often to convert a trifling quarrel into a lasting
one, and dissolve ties founded on the basis of tender affection.

Old Rosel perceived with some degree of pleasure the anxiety and sorrow
of her young lady, and would perhaps have gladly taken advantage of her
distress, by way of punishing her for the withdrawal of her confidence,
had not her natural kindness of heart resumed its sway over the
malicious joy which she had given way too. She looked at the young man
full in the face, and said, "You surely don't intend to leave us so
soon, since it is but an hour ago that you arrived at Lichtenstein?
Before you have had your mid-day meal, we will not allow you to depart,
for that would be quite against the custom of the castle; and besides
which, you have probably not yet seen my master?"

It was a great point gained for Bertha's cause to hear