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Aunt Lisbeth dressed, and met Margarita descending. They exchanged the good-morning of young maiden and old. 'Go thou first, said Aunt Lisbeth. Margarita gaily tripped ahead. 'Girl! cried Aunt Lisbeth, 'what's that thing in thy back hair? 'I have borrowed Lieschen's arrow, aunt. Mine has had an accident. 'Lieschen's arrow! An accident! Now I will see to that after breakfast, Margarita.
Meanwhile Lieschen's funeral had been emphatically a public mourning. Nay, so great was the emotion, that it almost deadened the interest which otherwise would have been so powerful, in the news now daily reaching us from Paris.
He smiled as the consul entered, and wiped from his full red lips with the back of his hand the traces of a sausage he was eating. The consul recognized the flavor at once, he had smelled it before in Lieschen's little hand-basket. "You say you lived at Rome?" began the consul pleasantly. "Did you take out your first declaration of your intention of becoming an American citizen there?"
From all which it resulted that Lieschen's absence, though obviously voluntary, was wholly inexplicable to them; and no clew whatever could be given as to the motives of the crime. When these details became known, conjecture naturally interpreted Lieschen's absence at night as an assignation. But with whom? She was not known to have a lover.
It appeared that Lehfeldt, moved, perhaps, partly by a sense of the injustice which had been done to Kerkel in even suspecting him of the crime, and in submitting him to an examination more poignantly affecting to him under such circumstances than a public trial would have been under others; and moved partly by the sense that Lieschen's love had practically drawn Kerkel within the family for her choice of him as a husband had made him morally, if not legally, a son-in-law; and moved partly by the sense of loneliness which had now settled on their childless home, Lehfeldt had in the most pathetic and considerate terms begged Kerkel to take the place of his adopted son, and become joint partner with him in the business.
Aunt Lisbeth dressed, and met Margarita descending. They exchanged the good-morning of young maiden and old. 'Go thou first, said Aunt Lisbeth. Margarita gaily tripped ahead. 'Girl! cried Aunt Lisbeth, 'what's that thing in thy back hair? 'I have borrowed Lieschen's arrow, aunt. Mine has had an accident. 'Lieschen's arrow! An accident! Now I will see to that after breakfast, Margarita.
It was truly and simply the suggestion of my vagrant fancy, which had mysteriously settled itself into a conviction; and having thus capriciously identified the stranger with Lieschen's murderer, I now, upon evidence quite as preposterous, identified Bourgonef with the stranger. The folly became apparent even to myself.
Had she lived, said the heartbroken youth, he would gladly have consented to accept any fortune which her love might bestow, because he felt that his own love and the devotion of a life might repay it. But there was nothing now that he could give in exchange. For his services he was amply paid; his feelings towards Lieschen's parents must continue what they had ever been.
Perhaps she had been detected; perhaps she was ill; perhaps but this was his mother's suggestion, and took little hold of him there had been visitors who had stayed later than usual, and Lieschen, finding the night so advanced, had postponed her visit to the morrow. Franz, who interpreted Lieschen's feelings by his own, was assured that no postponement of a voluntary kind was credible of her.
His absence had not been noticed in the tumult of grief and inquiry; but it became suddenly invested with a dreadful significance, now that it was rumored that he had been Lieschen's lover.
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