the now
unrecognizing young face and stuttered forth something, paused, then
said in a low, distinct voice, which shook me from head to foot:

"So! Better he should die. The brood is worthy the nest it sprung from.
Where is our blood, that he whines after that hound--that hound?"

With which, and with a fell look around, he departed, leaving Sigmund
oblivious of all that had passed, utterly indifferent and unconscious,
and me shivering with fear at the outburst I had seen.

But it seemed to me that my charge was worse. I left him for a few
moments, and seeking out the countess, spoke my mind.

"Frau Graefin, Eugen must be sent for. I fear that Sigmund is going to
die, and I dare not let him die without sending for his father."

"I dare not!" said the countess.

She had met her husband, and was flung, unnerved, upon a couch, her hand
over her heart.

"But I dare, and I must do it!" said I, secretly wondering at myself. "I
shall telegraph for him."

"If my husband knew!" she breathed.

"I can not help it," said I. "Is the poor child to die among people who
profess to love him, with the one wish ungratified which he has been
repeating ever since he began to be ill? I do not understand such love;
I call it horrible inhumanity."

"For Eugen to enter this house again!" she said in a whisper.

"I would to God that there were any other head as noble under its roof!"
was my magniloquent and thoroughly earnest inspiration. "Well, _gnaedige
Frau_, will you arrange this matter, or shall I?"

"I dare not," she moaned, half distracted; "I dare not--but I will do
nothing to prevent you. Use the whole household; they are at your
command."

I lost not an instant in writing out a telegram and dispatching it by a
man on horseback to Lahnburg. I summoned Eugen briefly:

"Sigmund is ill. I am here. Come to us."

I saw the man depart, and then I went and told the countess what I had
done. She turned, if possible, a shade paler, then said:

"I am not responsible for it."

Then I left the poor pale lady to still her beating heart and kill her
deadly apprehensions in the embroidery of the lily of the field and the
modest violet.

No change in the child's condition. A lethargy had fallen upon him. That
awful stupor, with the dark, flushed cheek and heavy breath, was to me
more ominous than the restlessness of fever.

I sat down and calculated. My telegram might be in Eugen's hand in the
course of an hour.

When could he