But the head of the house of Stahlberg took little heed of the gossip or of the major’s attitude toward his fellow-men, and approached him without hesitation.  The bitter, disappointed man, who shunned all the world, could not fail to admire in the manufacturer much that was akin to his own nature, and while their acquaintance never ripened into friendship, Falkenried understood and appreciated Stahlberg’s rugged character, and in the years in which they lived near one another the Stahlberg house was the only one which he ever entered willingly.  So he grew to know the children of the house intimately, and kept up his intercourse with the family after his return to Berlin.  When Wallmoden married he felt that both he and Adelheid had been hardly treated by the Colonel, when the latter sent some plausible excuse for not attending the wedding.  Adelheid knew little or nothing of the Colonel’s fateful history.  She supposed him to be childless, and had only recently learned from her husband that he had married very young, been divorced from his wife for many years, and was now a widower.

Eight days after the return of the Wallmodens, as Adelheid was sitting at her writing table late one afternoon, Colonel Falkenried was announced.  She rose at once, threw down her pen and hastened to greet her old friend.

“How glad I am to see you, dear Colonel.  We received your telegram, and Herbert was just about to start to the station to meet you himself, when he received a summons from the duke and had to go at once to the castle, so we could only send the carriage for you.”  Her greeting was warm and cordial, such as an old friend of her father might have expected, but Falkenried, while not exactly distant, was certainly not hearty.  He took the extended hand, but his manner was cold and earnest, and he said indifferently, as he took the chair offered him:  “Well, we can talk to one another until his return.”

The colonel had changed, changed so greatly as to be past recognition.  Were it not for the tall and erect bearing he would be taken for an old man.  The hair of this man in his fifty-second year was snow white, his forehead was deeply ploughed with furrows, and the deep lines in his face told of sorrow beyond all hope of cure.  The countenance, which had once been so full of expression, had a staring, uncomfortable look now, and his manner bespoke a reserve and repression which could not be penetrated.  Regine’s expression, “The man seems turned to stone,” was only too true.

One could not help forming the impression that the good or ill of his fellow creatures were both matters of supreme indifference to him; he lived only in the fulfillment of the duties of his profession.

“I have disturbed you, Ada,” he said, using the old name which he had always heard in her father’s house, as he threw a glance at the half-finished letter on the writing table.

“Oh, there’s plenty of time,” his hostess answered carelessly.  “I was only writing to Eugen.”