“I know,” interrupted his sister, “that he asked for his discharge, because, with his keen sense of honor, he could not bear to serve longer, after his son had become a deserter.  It was a step prompted by despair.”

“Yes, and it was his only salvation, that he, with his military knowledge and skill, was not allowed to sink into oblivion.  The chief of the General’s staff took up the matter and brought it before the King, and they decided that the father should not be allowed to sacrifice himself for a boy’s rash action, and that the service could not lose such a highly esteemed officer.  So they would not accept his resignation, but permitted him to go to a distant garrison, where the matter was never mentioned in his presence.  Now, after ten years, it’s buried and forgotten by the whole world.”

“With one exception,” said Regine sorrowfully.  “My heart aches whenever I think of what Falkenried once was, and what he is now.  The bitter experience of his marriage made him gloomy and unsocial, but in good time he recovered himself a little, and his whole soul turned to his boy and his boy’s advancement.  Now everything is lost and the rigid, stark fulfilment of duty is all that remains; all else is dead within him, and as a sequence, all his old friendships have become painful to him—­we must let him go his own way.”

She broke off with a sigh, as the face of her girlhood’s friend came before her mind’s eye.  Then laying her hand on her brother’s arm, she said in conclusion: 

“Perhaps you are right, Herbert, when you say that a man chooses more wisely when he has come to years of discretion.  You need not fear Falkenried’s fate; your wife has good blood in her veins.  I knew Herr Stahlberg well; he worked earnestly and with capability, too, or he would never have succeeded as he did in life.  And he was ever an honest man, even after he became a millionaire, and Adelheid is her father’s daughter, bone and sinew.  You have chosen well for yourself, and I rejoice with you from the bottom of my heart.”

* * * * *

The little hunting castle of Rodeck which belonged to the princely house of Adelsberg, lay but a few miles distant from “Fuerstenstein,” in the midst of the deep forest.  The small, plain building containing at most but a dozen rooms, had been hastily prepared for the unexpected coming of the prince.  It had not been used for years, and had a neglected appearance.  But as one stepped out from the dark, gloomy forest upon the light greensward, and saw the old building with its high, pointed roof, and its four little towers guarding the corners, it seemed very picturesque in its loneliness.

The Adelsbergs were old-time princes of the German empire who had long since lost their sovereignty, but who still retained their princely title, together with an immense fortune which included very great landed possessions.  The family had dwindled in number so that there were but few representatives left, and only one in the direct line, Prince Egon, and he as owner of the family estates and through kinship on his dead mother’s side with the reigning house, played a conspicuous part among the nobility of the country.