von Westphalen.
She wishes it kept a secret from her father, but I am at liberty to
tell you of it."

The elder Marx was at once shocked and seriously disturbed. Baron von
Westphalen was his old and intimate friend. No thought of romance
between their children had ever come into his mind. It seemed disloyal
to keep the verlobung of Karl and Jenny a secret; for should it be
revealed, what would the baron think of Marx? Their disparity of rank
and fortune would make the whole affair stand out as something wrong
and underhand.

The father endeavored to make his son see all this. He begged him to go
and tell the baron, but young Marx was not to be persuaded.

"Send me to Berlin," he said, "and we shall again be separated; but I
shall work and make a name for myself, so that when I return neither
Jenny nor her father will have occasion to be disturbed by our
engagement."

With these words he half satisfied his father, and before long he was
sent to Berlin, where he fell manfully upon his studies. His father had
insisted that he should study law; but his own tastes were for
philosophy and history. He attended lectures in jurisprudence "as a
necessary evil," but he read omnivorously in subjects that were nearer
to his heart. The result was that his official record was not much
better than it had been at Bonn.

The same sort of restlessness, too, took possession of him when he
found that Jenny would not answer his letters. No matter how eagerly
and tenderly he wrote to her, there came no reply. Even the most
passionate pleadings left her silent and unresponsive. Karl could not
complain, for she had warned him that she would not write to him. She
felt that their engagement, being secret, was anomalous, and that until
her family knew of it she was not free to act as she might wish.

Here again was seen the wisdom of her maturer years; but Karl could not
be equally reasonable. He showered her with letters, which still she
would not answer. He wrote to his father in words of fire. At last,
driven to despair, he said that he was going to write to the Baron von
Westphalen, reveal the secret, and ask for the baron's fatherly consent.

It seemed a reckless thing to do, and yet it turned out to be the
wisest. The baron knew that such an engagement meant a social
sacrifice, and that, apart from the matter of rank, young Marx was
without any fortune to give the girl the luxuries to which she had been
accustomed. Other and more el