a most trivial excuse, to show an amount of exaggerated emotion unusual
even for her. He remembered her long absence and her changed expression
when she returned, her silence that evening and her increasing
taciturnity ever since. The connexion between the paragraph and her
conduct seemed certain, and Greifenstein set himself systematically to
think out some explanation for the facts. In five and twenty years
Rieseneck's name had never been mentioned in her presence. If she had
ever heard of him it must have been before she had married
Greifenstein. It was possible that she might feel the disgrace involved
in the man's return so keenly as to suffer physically at the thought of
it; but Greifenstein's common sense told him that this was very
improbable. In such a case it would have been far more natural for her
to come to her husband and ask to be told the whole truth. It was
easier to believe that her conduct was due to some other cause, that
she had really never heard of Rieseneck's existence, and that there was
some other person whose possible return, in consequence of the amnesty,
she dreaded as much as Greifenstein feared the reappearance of his
half-brother. Many persons had been involved in the revolutionary
movements of 1848 and had been obliged to leave the country in
consequence. Clara's first husband had died of heart disease in Dresden
in the year 1860, and consequently could not have been connected with
the events of those times in any way to his discredit. She had shown
Greifenstein the official notice of his death in an old gazette of the
period. But it was not unlikely that in those unsettled times one of
her relations might have got into trouble and been exiled or
imprisoned. At the time of her marriage however she had acknowledged no
relative excepting an elderly aunt who had been present at the wedding,
but who had died since, without ever paying a visit to the castle, and
no other connexion of hers had ever appeared upon the scene.
Greifenstein was well aware that he had hurried the marriage by every