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 “You are raving; your head is beginning to burn with fever. I must go and wet the handkerchiefs in fresh water.”

“Go! I understand you. You are sorry that my head lies so comfortably on your lap. Put me down on the grass. I do not want to have any more bandages from you. Oh, Jenny, one day you will have to answer before heaven for your treatment of me in my dying hour!”

Jenny felt a pain at her heart; tears rushed from her eyes, not in drops—in streams. The painful reproaches of Mundy agitated her so much that she felt almost choking. She tried to speak, but could not. Only after a while she uttered, with an almost inarticulate cry, the one word—“Edmund!”

The baron heaved a sigh. Jenny’s tears fell fast on his brow and cheeks. His own eyes filled with tears too, but he did not speak. He took possession of her right hand, drew it to him, and impressed a long kiss upon it. After a moment’s hesitation the young girl withdrew her hand from his, and of her own accord kissed his lips.

“God bless you for that, Jenny!” he said fervently, trying with all his might to raise himself; but he had not strength to do so, and Jenny would not allow it.

A long silence followed.

“I am in a pitiable position,” began the baron again "and that I know it, and yet do not try to emancipate myself from it, is the saddest part of all. I am a man in my own right—am my father’s lawful heir, and in possession of all my faculties and senses; and yet—I am a slave, a mere nonentity in my own house! Don’t I play, in your eyes, a very despicable part?”

Jenny remembered Father Cvok’s opinion of Mundy