“Really—­have you been ill?” cried Paul, concerned.

“No, no, there is nothing the matter with me,” Wilhelm hastened to answer, with a forced smile.

The awakened anxiety of his friends would not be dispelled, however, till he had repeated his assurance many times, and reinforced it by additions and enlargements.

Paul then returned to his question as to Wilhelm’s adventures, the latter doing his best to get out of it by a few vague remarks on the uneventful character of his life during the last few months, and then hurried to descant on Paris, describing the town to them with the volubility of a guide-book.  On his inquiring in return about their affairs, Paul and Malvine vied with one another in the redundancy of their account.  All was well, so far.  At the last distribution of Orders Paul had received the Order of the Red Eagle, and beside that, during the course of the winter, two new foreign decorations.  There were all sorts of innovations on the estate, which he described in detail.  At present he was hard at work on an entirely new scheme:  the founding of a colony on the moor, composed of discharged prisoners, tramps, and such like ne’er-do-wells; where, by supplying them with agricultural labor, they might be brought back to a decent and remunerative way of life.

Malvine had much to tell of the autumn and winter festivities, both at her own and other houses, and also, that of the three heiresses whom she had picked out for Wilhelm, one was married, another engaged, and there remained only the third, the one with the curly hair, who still asked after him from time to time.

Meanwhile the news of Wilhelm’s arrival had penetrated as far as Willy, who now came rushing in.

“Onkelchen, Onkelchen! have you come back?” he shouted, long before he reached Wilhelm, and stretched out his little arms to him.  He had not grown much, but was plump and rosy as a ripe apple.  Wilhelm kissed him, and stroked the soft, fair curls that felt so much like Pilar’s silky hair.

“Have you been a good boy all this time?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, very good—­haven’t I, father?” the boy cried eagerly.  “And I can read now—­everything—­the newspaper too.  I got a beautiful big box of bricks for it at Christmas.”

Wilhelm had taken him on his knee, but the lively child would not keep quiet for long.  He jumped down and hopped about in front of his godfather and chattered away.

“I say, Onkelchen, you have just come in time for my birthday, haven’t you?”

Wilhelm had not thought of it.

“When is your birthday, my boy?” he asked, rather crestfallen.

“Why, don’t you know?  It is the day after to-morrow.  And what have you brought me?”

He did not wait for an answer, having caught sight, at that moment, of Fido, who, shy as all dogs are in a strange place and among strange people, had crept away under a table, and sat there very still with his eyes firmly fixed on Wilhelm.