How imploringly he could plead! how humbly the words fell from the old merchant’s lips, moving Els to her inmost heart as she remembered the curt inflexibility with which, only yesterday, this arrogant man, in that very spot, had refused any connection with the Ortliebs!  How much it must cost him to bow his stiff neck before her, who was so much younger, and approach her father, whose heart he had so pitilessly trampled under foot, in the character of a supplicant for aid, perhaps a beggar!

Besides, Wolff was his son!

Whatever wrong the father had done her she must forget it, and the task was not difficult; for now—­she felt it—­no matter from what motive, he honestly desired to unite her to his son.  If her lover now led her through the door adorned with the huge, showy escutcheon, she would no longer come as a person unwillingly tolerated, but as a welcome helper-perhaps as the saviour of the imperilled house.  Of the women of the Eysvogel family she forbade herself to think.

How touching the handsome, aristocratic, grey-haired man seemed to her in his helpless weakness!  If her father would only receive him, he would find it no easier than she to deny him the compassion he so greatly needed.

She knocked at the lonely mourner’s door and was admitted.

He was sitting, with his head bowed on his hands, opposite to the large portrait of her dead mother in her bridal robes.  The dusk of the gathering twilight concealed the picture, but he had doubtless gazed long at the lovely features, and still beheld them with his mental vision.

Els was received with a mournful greeting; but when Herr Ernst heard what had brought her to him, he fiercely commanded her to tell Herr Casper that he would have nothing more to do with him.

Els interceded for the unfortunate man, begging, pleading, and assuring her father that she would never give up Wolff.  The happiness of her whole life was centred in him and his love.  If he refused the Eysvogels the aid besought by the old merchant who, in his humility, seemed a different man——­

Here her father indignantly broke in, ordering her to disturb him no longer.  But now the heritage of his own nature asserted itself in Els and, with an outburst of indignation, she pointed to the picture of her mother, whose kind heart certainly could not have endured to see a broken-hearted man, on whose rescue the happiness of her own child depended, turned from her door like an importunate beggar.

At this the man whose locks had long been grey sprang from his chair with the agility of a youth, exclaiming in vehement excitement:  “To embitter the hours devoted to the most sacred grief is genuine Eysvogel selfishness.  Everything for themselves!  What do they care for others?  I except your Wolff; let the future decide what concerns him and you.  I will stand by you.  But to hope for happiness and peace-nay, even a life without bitter