ancestral home, was vastly more interesting than any equally well-born
girl could have been, who chanced to be rich enough to be marched into
society as a matrimonial investment for young men of her station. But
it was precisely because Hilda possessed that one point in common with
all such eligible young ladies that Greif regarded her with a romantic
devotion he could never have felt for a village Gretchen. His pride in
her nobility was indeed far less than his love for herself, but it made
for that love a rampart against love's deadliest enemy, which is
ridicule. He certainly did not tell himself so. He would have thought
it an insult to Hilda to worship her for anything but her own self; but
he was none the less aware that the pedestal upon which his idol stood
was strong enough to withstand any assault. This being certain, it was
the very impossibility of any further comparison that attracted him
most. She was unlike any one whom he met, or was ever likely to meet,
and his imagination invested her with many exceptional attributes, most
of which she undoubtedly possessed in one degree or another.

Each time he returned and left the noisy train and the smart modern
railway station behind him, to plunge into the silent forest, he felt
more strongly that his real sympathies all lay between Greifenstein and
Sigmundskron, and that his visits to the world were only disturbing
dreams. They must be renewed from time to time, at ever-increasing
intervals, but the real peace of his life awaited him in his home. He,
too, like Hilda, was a child of the woods, and felt that the trees, the
foaming streams and the changeless crags were all parts of himself, to
lose which would be like forfeiting a limb of his body or a sense of
his intelligence. The baroness need not have been afraid lest he should
wander about the world to forget Sigmundskron or Hilda. Nature had
made him constant, and circumstances had made him happy in his own
place.