He entreated her to speak but one word to him; to tell him what she desired.  He would do it, be it what it would, he swore to her; but she remained silent.  He asked her once more, passionately and tenderly, whether she would be his.  With downcast eyes, and with the deepest tenderness of manner she shook her head in a gentle No.  He asked if she still desired to go to the school.  Without any show of feeling she declined.  Would she then go back to Charlotte?  She inclined her head in token of assent, with a look of comfort and relief.  He went to the window to give directions to the coachman, and when his back was turned she darted like lightning out of the room, and was down the stairs and in the carriage in an instant.  The coachman drove back along the road which he had come the day before, and Edward followed at some distance on horseback.

CHAPTER XVII

It was with the utmost surprise that Charlotte saw the carriage drive up with Ottilie, and Edward at the same moment ride into the court-yard of the castle.  She ran down to the hall.  Ottilie alighted, and approached her and Edward.  Violently and eagerly she caught the hands of the wife and husband, pressed them together, and hurried off to her own room.  Edward threw himself on Charlotte’s neck and burst into tears.  He could not give her any explanation; he besought her to have patience with him, and to go at once to see Ottilie.  Charlotte followed her to her room, and she could not enter it without a shudder.  It had been all cleared out.  There was nothing to be seen but the empty walls, which stood there looking cheerless, vacant, and miserable.  Everything had been carried away except the little box, which from an uncertainty what was to be done with it, had been left in the middle of the room.  Ottilie was lying stretched upon the ground, her arm and head leaning across the cover.  Charlotte bent anxiously over her, and asked what had happened; but she received no answer.

Her maid had come with restoratives.  Charlotte left her with Ottilie, and herself hastened back to Edward.  She found him in the saloon, but he could tell her nothing.

He threw himself down before her; he bathed her hands with tears; he flew to his own room, and she was going to follow him thither, when she met his valet.  From this man she gathered as much as he was able to tell.  The rest she put together in her own thoughts as well as she could, and then at once set herself resolutely to do what the exigencies of the moment required.  Ottilie’s room was put to rights again as quickly as possible; Edward found his, to the last paper, exactly as he had left it.

The three appeared again to fall into some sort of relation with one another.  But Ottilie persevered in her silence, and Edward could do nothing except entreat his wife to exert a patience which seemed wanting to himself.  Charlotte sent messengers to Mittler and to the Major.  The first was absent from home and could not be found.  The latter came.  To him Edward poured out all his heart, confessing every most trifling circumstance to him, and thus Charlotte learnt fully what had passed; what it had been which had produced such violent excitement, and how so strange an alteration of their mutual position had been brought about.