How enchanting this prattle was to me! But as her recent unkindness had made me silent and reserved, so now the unlooked-for kindness she showed me produced the same effect. I went by her side, with a half confused, half happy smile upon my face, across the wide lawn to the house, where, on reaching her terrace, we separated, after exchanging another pressure of the hand.
In three bounds I had ascended the steep stair, flung open violently the door of my room, but stopped upon the threshold with some surprise, as I saw Herr von Zehren sitting in the great high-backed chair at the window.
"You have kept me waiting long; I have been sitting here fully an hour."
This did not tend to restore my composure; from his chair one could see across the lawn directly to the seat under the maple. If Herr von Zehren had been sitting here an hour, he had certainly seen with his keen eyes much more than I could have wished. I returned his salutation with great embarrassment, which certainly did not diminish when he said, with a gesture towards the seat: "Mary Stuart, George, eh? Sir Paulet the cruel jailor with the great bunch of keys? Enthusiastic Mortimer--'Life is but a moment, and death but another'--eh? Faithless Lord Leicester, who has the convenient habit of taking ship for France as soon as heads are in danger!"
He filliped the ash from his cigar, and then with one of those instantaneous changes of humor to which I had grown accustomed, began to laugh aloud, and said:
"No, my dear George, you must not turn such a look of indignation upon me. I am really your friend; and, as I said to you yesterday, it is no fault of yours, and I frankly ask you to forgive me if I yesterday for a moment made you suffer for what you are entirely innocent of. She has to play her comedies; she has done it from a child. I have indeed often feared that she gets it from her unhappy mother. Many a one has suffered from it, and I not the least; but you I would willingly save. I have often enough warned you indirectly, and now do it plainly. What are you about?"
I had, at his last words, hurried across the room and seized my hat, which hung by the door. "What are you about?" he cried again, springing from his chair, and catching me by the arm.