only the cheering buds of hope.

Yet this favourite of fortune had expressed a desire to change places
with him. The thought that many others, too, would be glad to step into
his shoes tortured Wolff's honest heart as though he himself were to
blame for the delusion of these short-sighted folk.

Apart from his strength and health, his well-formed body, his noble
birth, his faith in the love of his betrothed bride--at this hour he
forgot how much these things were--he found nothing in his lot which
seemed worth desiring.

He might not even rejoice in his stainless honesty with the same perfect
confidence as in his betrothal.

Yes, he had cared for noble old Berthold Vorchtel's daughter as if she
were his sister. He had even found pleasure in the thought that Ursula
was destined to become his wife, yet no word either of love or allusion
to future marriage had been exchanged between them. He had felt free,
and had a right to consider himself so, when love for Els Ortlieb
overwhelmed him so swiftly and powerfully.

Yet Ursula and her oldest brother treated him as if he had been guilty of
base disloyalty. His pure conscience, however, enabled him to endure
this more easily than the other burden, of which he became aware on the
long-anticipated day when his father made him a partner in the old firm
and gave him an insight into the condition of the property and the course
of the business.

Then he had learned the heavy losses which had been sustained recently,