"You do not understand it at all, Albert! They love each other. Then they ought to marry; and marry they shall!"
What could Gersdorf say to refute such logic as this?
Meanwhile, Alice Nordheim was in her father's study, which she rarely entered, and which she must have sought now for some important purpose, for she looked pale and agitated, and as she stood leaning against the window-frame, seemed to be undergoing an inward struggle; yet there was nothing in prospect save an interview between the father and daughter. There was, to be sure, nothing of confidence or intimacy in the relation existing between them. Nordheim, who had surrounded his daughter with all the luxury and splendour that wealth could procure, took, in fact, very little interest in her, as Alice had always felt, but in her docile compliance with whatever her father desired, there had never been any collision between them.
For the first time this was otherwise; she was about to go to her father with a confession, which must, she knew, provoke his wrath, and she trembled at the thought, although her resolution never wavered.
All at once the president's step was heard in the next room, and his voice said, "Herr Waltenberg's secretary? Certainly. Show him in!"
Alice stood hesitating for a moment; her father, who did not suspect her presence here, was not alone, and, agitated as she was, she could not confront a stranger. Probably the man brought some message from Waltenberg, and his business would shortly be despatched. The young girl, therefore, slipped into her father's bedroom, which adjoined his office, and the door of which remained ajar. Nordheim immediately entered the room she had left, and was shortly joined there by his visitor.
The president received him with affable ease. He knew that Ernst in his travels had picked up somewhere an individual who, ostensibly his secretary, played the part of his confidential friend, but he took further interest in the matter. He either had not heard or had not heeded his name; at all events, he did not recognize his former friend. Twenty-five years are long in passing, and such a life as Gronau's had been is a great disguiser. This man with his brown, deeply-furrowed face and gray hair had nothing in his appearance to recall the fresh, merry youth who had gone out into the world to seek his fortune.