Already she is fond of you; she will love you then. Then what?"
"I shall look upon myself as the inhabitant of a different planet," he
had replied; and he had kept his promise.
But the little maid had not promised anything; and if, perchance, she
guessed the weighty secret of her destiny, whence could she have taken
the strength of mind to battle against what threatened to drive even the
strong man to madness?
Ludwig was thirty-one years old, the fourth year in this house of
voluntary madmen. With extreme solicitude he saw the child grow to
womanhood, blessed with all the magic charms of her sex. Gladly would he
have kept her a child had it been in his power. He treated her as a
child--gave her dolls and the toys of a child; but this could not go on
forever. Deeply concerned, Ludwig observed that Marie's countenance
became more and more melancholy, and that now it rarely expressed
childlike naivete. A dreamy melancholy had settled upon it. And of what
did she dream? Why was she so sad? Why did she start? Why did the blood
rush to her cheeks when he came suddenly into her presence?
CHAPTER II
Count Vavel had made his fair neighbor at the manor the object of study.
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