“I tell you,” said Givenaught, “you will beggar yourself yet with your insane squanderings of money upon what you choose to consider poor and worthy objects.  All these years I have implored you to stop this foolish custom and husband your means, but all in vain.  You are always lying to me about these secret benevolences, but you never have managed to deceive me yet.  Every time a poor devil has been set upon his feet I have detected your hand in it—­incorrigible ass!”

“Every time you didn’t set him on his feet yourself, you mean.  Where I give one unfortunate a little private lift, you do the same for a dozen.  The idea of your swelling around the country and petting yourself with the nickname of Givenaught—­intolerable humbug!  Before I would be such a fraud as that, I would cut my right hand off.  Your life is a continual lie.  But go on, I have tried my best to save you from beggaring yourself by your riotous charities—­now for the thousandth time I wash my hands of the consequences.  A maundering old fool! that’s what you are.”

“And you a blethering old idiot!” roared Givenaught, springing up.

“I won’t stay in the presence of a man who has no more delicacy than to call me such names.  Mannerless swine!”

So saying, Herr Heartless sprang up in a passion.  But some lucky accident intervened, as usual, to change the subject, and the daily quarrel ended in the customary daily living reconciliation.  The gray-headed old eccentrics parted, and Herr Heartless walked off to his own castle.

Half an hour later, Hildegarde was standing in the presence of Herr Givenaught.  He heard her story, and said—­

“I am sorry for you, my child, but I am very poor, I care nothing for bookish rubbish, I shall not be there.”

He said the hard words kindly, but they nearly broke poor Hildegarde’s heart, nevertheless.  When she was gone the old heartbreaker muttered, rubbing his hands—­

“It was a good stroke.  I have saved my brother’s pocket this time, in spite of him.  Nothing else would have prevented his rushing off to rescue the old scholar, the pride of Germany, from his trouble.  The poor child won’t venture near him after the rebuff she has received from his brother the Givenaught.”

But he was mistaken.  The Virgin had commanded, and Hildegarde would obey.  She went to Herr Heartless and told her story.  But he said coldly—­

“I am very poor, my child, and books are nothing to me.  I wish you well, but I shall not come.”

When Hildegarde was gone, he chuckled and said—­

“How my fool of a soft-headed soft-hearted brother would rage if he knew how cunningly I have saved his pocket.  How he would have flown to the old man’s rescue!  But the girl won’t venture near him now.”

When Hildegarde reached home, her father asked her how she had prospered.  She said—­

“The Virgin has promised, and she will keep her word; but not in the way I thought.  She knows her own ways, and they are best.”