s temple. At that moment a woman's shriek was
heard, his wife rushed in, his arm was seized with the strength of
despair; he started, and his finger touched the trigger--a flash, a
report, and he sank back on the sofa, and groaning, raised both his
hands to his eyes.

In the merchant's house the bereaved father came, candle in hand, out of
the room of the dead to the office below. He looked anxiously about on
the desk, in the cupboard, in every corner of the room; then sat down,
shook his head, and marveled. Then he locked up the office, went up
stairs again, and fell groaning and crying on the bed. So he spent the
whole night, seeking and wailing, wailing and seeking--a distracted,
desolate, broken-down man.

CHAPTER XXVI.

In the merchant's house domestic life flowed smoothly on again. The
small disturbance made by the return of Anton had gradually settled
down. Those first-class treasures of Sabine's had made way for other
specimens of damask, still of a superior kind, it is true, but which
came within the compass of the elderly cousin's comprehension. She had
been quite right in prophesying that Anton would never remark those
signs of exuberant gratitude or their withdrawal. However, one change
had been permanently made--the greatest, the best of all changes--the
clerk retained a privileged place in the heart of the young mistress of
the firm, and his tall figure often appeared as one of the circle that
Sabine's fancy loved to gather round her when at her work-table or in
her treasure-chamber.

To-day she was walking restlessly up and down before dinner. The cousin,
who heard every thing, had just told her that a maid from Ehrenthal's
had run into the office to announce Bernhard's death to his friend. "How
will he bear it?" thought she. And the name of Ehrenthal forced her
thoughts back to the past, to one now far away, and to that painful hour
when the struggle going on in her own mind had been suddenly brought to
a close by a letter from the house of the departed. And Anton had known
of that conquered feeling of hers. How considerate he had always been,
how chivalrous, how helpful! She wondered if he had any idea of the
completeness of her triumph over a girlish illusion. She shook her head.
"No, he has not. It was here, at this very table, that an accident first
betrayed me to him. That past time still rises like a cloud between us.
Whenever I sit near Wohlfart of an evening, I am conscious of another