s. A country waiting-maid,
who was coming out of the kitchen, told Felix that his party were
up-stairs dancing, and asked whether he wanted anything. He silently
shook his head, and slowly ascended the stairs; not with the intention
of joining his friends, but merely to find where she was, and which
room of the house it would be necessary for him to avoid.

Not a soul was to be seen in the dimly-lighted hall above; but all the
doors stood open on account of the heat, and poured forth a mixture of
lamp-light, smoke, and noise, while the floor creaked under the regular
tread of the dancers, and the air trembled with the surly grumbling of
a gigantic bass-viol. The dancing-hall lay at the extreme end of the
corridor. Felix walked along it without looking into any of the other
rooms until he reached the end door, where he found that, by standing
behind the spectators, he could comfortably overlook all that was going
on within. The bridegroom seemed to be a young forester, and his bride
a burgher's daughter from the city. Consequently, the whole affair had
a certain something about it which distinguished it favorably from
ordinary country weddings, and the couples spun around through the
spacious hall in quite an orderly fashion, and without the customary
shouting, screaming, and romping, to the music of several stringed
instruments, a solitary clarionet, and the occasional sound of a
woodman's horn.

The first couple that Felix made out through the blue mist of
tobacco-smoke was Rosenbusch with his Nanny. And, to his surprise, he
saw Elfinger and his sweetheart waltzing gracefully close behind them;
and the future bride of heaven seemed to abandon herself without much
resistance to this worldly pleasure.

And now even the young countess herself appeared amid this mixed
company, whirled by the young baron, her betrothed, far more rapidly
than would have been good _ton_ at a court ball. Her brother, the
count, stood in a retired corner, apparently paying his court to Aunt
Babette, who would not let herself be seduced into dancing again for
any price in the world. In the adjoining room, which he could only half
overlook, he perceived his friend Kohle, absorbed in an earnest
conversation with the countess.

No trace of Irene anywhere! Could she have hidden from him? It was
hardly possible that she could be in the other rooms, where the more
elderly relatives of the bridal couple sat, eating and talking. And yet
he must kno