In the wicked world which surrounded the Black Forest on all
sides, persons would have been found malicious enough to sus-
pect that Greif really wished to be free from his engagement
with Hilda. He himself, had he been less excited, would have
hesitated before speaking as he had done, lest such a motive
should be attributed to him. He would have acted and talked
with more diplomacy and less outward energy, though with the
same inward conviction, and it is by no means impossible that
Frau von Sigmundskron's first intention might in such a case
have remained unchanged, and that she would have gently
acquiesced in Greif's proposal to give up the marriage. But
there was no guile in the baroness, and but little in Greif
himself. He had been carried away in his speech by the sin-
cerity of what he felt, the more easily because bis whole natixre



GEEIFENSTEIN. 199

was unstrung by grief; and Hilda's mother had seen in him
only the hero, ready to sacrifice everything for her he loved, and
womanlike, she had felt irresistibly impelled to reward him on
the spot by a generous sacrifice of those convictions which his
real or fancied eloquence had already destroyed. So simple was
she, that it did not strike her that Greif s own position was
changed, that he was all at once his own master, possessed of a
large fortune and perhaps of tastes which he had concealed dur-
ing his father's life. If the aforesaid wicked world had been
acquainted with the circumstances, it would assuredly have taken
this view into consideration. But that portion of mankind in
which are included so many of our acquaintance, but in whose
numbers we ourselves are never found, were very far from Greif-
enstein, and the Lady of Sigmundskron knew little of their modes
of thought. She saw that Greif was honest and she sought no
malicious explanation of his intentions. On the contrary, the
longer she i-efiected upon the interview, the more she admired
him, and strange to say, the nearer she came to accepting his
opinion of his father's guilt.
