Bertram had no difficulty in replying merrily to the merry questions of the fair stranger. His head was full of merry thoughts, there was nothing but rapture in his heart. All the world seemed to him to be filled with the fragrance of that rose Erna had given him to-day, that rose which he had since worn near his heart, and from which the hostile looks of Hildegard and the others fell off harmless, as from a potent talisman. Human envy notwithstanding, things awarded him by the grace of the gods were coming to him, nay, had come. If he had still required any confirmation, what confirmation more delightful could he have had than the exuberant mirth to which the beloved child's melancholy gravity had suddenly turned? Like fairy music her rippling laugh seemed to him, coming from the adjoining room, where, surrounded by her cousins, she was as indefatigable in admiring Herr von Busche's feats, as that gentleman himself was in performing them. And he was willing to bear in patience that she was taken up by her friends all the evening, even as he was himself by the rest of the company, and that thus he had not found one single moment when he might have approached her, might have told her what she knew already, what no longer required to be said, what could be said only by a kiss on those pure, sweet lips.
In such rapturous dreams his soul was rejoicing whilst he was conversing gaily with the Russian beauty. And rapture, too, it was to compare this foreign beauty, from whom, in spite of her youth, the strong and not always pure breath of the great world had long ago brushed away the dainty down, with the chaste grace of the beloved maid. She needed no sparkling diamonds, no jingling of golden bracelets; she could dispense with all these over-refined arts of the toilet, this coquetterie which calculated every pose of the plump little frame, every movement of the round arms and the white hands, every rise and fall of the long lids, every glance, every smile from the black eyes! His Erna was the fairer and nobler of the two, a born Princess!
In their conversation, which was carried on, as far as Bertram was concerned, all the more eagerly the less his heart was touched by it, and to which Alexandra, passing as lightly as a bird from one subject to another, was constantly adding fresh topics of interest, they were interrupted by the loud laughter of the girls. Indeed, two of the sisters came rushing into the drawing-room to invite those who were there to come and admire a positively incredible trick which Herr von Busche had just performed, and which he was prepared to repeat--but by universal desire only. They drew the others away with them, uncle and aunt, the Herr _Oberförster_ and the Baron.