Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 2.djvu/44

36 showed me the most convincing letters, they pressed me vehemently, they profited by my despondency, my indignation; and so it was that I gave my hand to another, a deserving husband; but my heart and my thoughts were always thine.”

“I never left this town,” said Ferdinand; “but after a while I heard that thou wert married. They wished to part us, and they have succeeded. Thou art a happy mother; I live in the past, and all thy children I will love as if they were my own. But how strange that we should never once have met!”

“I seldom went abroad,” said she; “and as my husband took another name, soon after we were married, from a property which he inherited, thou couldst have no suspicion that we were so near together.”

“I avoided men,” said Ferdinand, “and lived for solitude. Leopold is almost the only one that has attracted me, and led me out amongst my fellows. O my beloved friend, it is like a frightful spectre-story, to think how we lost, and have again found each other!”

As the young people entered, the two were dissolved in tears, and in the deepest emotion. Neither of them told what had occurred, the secret seemed too holy. But ever after, the old man was the friend of the house; and Death alone parted these two beings, who had found each other so strangely, to re-unite them in a short time, beyond the power of separation.