



Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                              A NOBLE NAME

                                   OR

                              DOeNNINGHAUSEN

                           BY CLAIRE VON GLUeMER


    TRANSLATED BY
    MRS. A. L. WISTER

    PHILADELPHIA
    J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
    1883

    Copyright, 1882, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & Co.




CONTENTS.


I.--"ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE"

II.--DISAPPOINTED ASPIRATIONS

III.--A CRISIS

IV.--FUTURE PLANS DECIDED

V.--AT DOeNNINGHAUSEN

VI.--THE FREIHERR'S PRINCIPLES

VII.--JOHANNA TO LUDWIG

VIII.--CHRISTMAS AT DOeNNINGHAUSEN

IX.--NEW YEAR'S EVE

X.--"THAT BLASE LIEUTENANT"

XI.--RECOVERY

XII.--CELA N'ENGAGE A RIEN

XIII.--JOHANNA TO LUDWIG

XIV.--AN UNEXPECTED RETURN

XV.--A BIRTHDAY FETE

XVI.--A BETROTHAL

XVII.--JOHANNA TO LUDWIG

XVIII.--TANNHAGEN

XIX.--PROFESSIONAL ENTHUSIASM

XX.--AN EQUESTRIAN ARTIST

XXI.--SHIPWRECK

XXII.--DOeNNINGHAUSEN OBSTINACY

XXIII.--THE FREIHERR ASSERTS HIS AUTHORITY

XXIV.--DR. URBAN WOLF

XXV.--A WAGER AND AN ADVISER

XXVI.--DR. STEIN'S SCHEME

XXVII.--THE FREIHERR'S WEAKNESS IS PAST

XXVIII.--THE TERRACE-COTTAGE

XXIX.--CHANGES AT DOeNNINGHAUSEN

XXX.--AN OLD FRIEND ONCE MORE

XXXI.--THE TRUTH AT LAST

XXXII.--TWO YEARS AFTERWARD




A NOBLE NAME;

OR,

DOeNNINGHAUSEN.




CHAPTER I.

"ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE."


At the window of a luxuriously-furnished dressing-room a young girl was
seated sewing, murmuring verses the while to herself with an absorbed
air. All around her lay various stuffs, ribbons, and laces, while
standing upon a footstool at a toilet-table immediately behind her a
strikingly beautiful child, five or six years old, was twisting gay
ribbons about her head and arms, finally throwing around her shoulders a
blue satin sash and looking at herself in the glass with immense
satisfaction.

"Lisbeth, what are you doing?" a sharp voice suddenly asked, and from
between the curtains of the portiere of the door of the adjoining
sleeping-room came a fair, pretty woman in an evident ill humour.

"Mamma!" the child exclaimed, and jumping hastily down from the
footstool, she entangled herself in her draperies and fell. Her mother
hurried towards her with a scream, but the young girl had already flown
to the little one's assistance.

"I haven't hurt myself," the child immediately declared, looking up
beseechingly at her mother, who, nevertheless, seized her impatiently by
the arm and tore off the sash from her shoulders. "All this beautiful
ribbon crushed and spoiled!" she said, crossly. "If you can take no
better care of Lisbeth, my dear Johanna, the child must stay with Lina.
Go, go to the nursery, and don't disturb me again to-day," she added,
turning to the little girl; and then, sitting down before the
dressing-table, she began to arrange her abundant fair hair.

Lisbeth went to Johanna and seized her hand. "Don't be vexed with
Lisbeth, mamma," the young girl entreated. "She is not to blame. I was
not attending to her; I was going over my part."

"If you do not know it perfectly by this time you had better give it
up," the other said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "Make up your
mind to do so, and I will give it to Fraeulein Dornbach. She can easily
learn those few words before to-morrow evening."

"Oh, no! let me try," the young girl exclaimed. "I have just said them
without stumbling. And my dress is nearly finished. I wanted to ask
you----"

"Well?" the other asked, when Johanna hesitated.

"To let me go to the theatre to-night," she replied, without looking up.

"What! again? You went only a couple of days ago."

"Yes, but I should so like to see papa as Egmont, and----" She hesitated
again and blushed. "And you as Claerchen," was what she meant to add,
knowing that this addition would have secured her the desired enjoyment;
but her innate integrity triumphed; her step-mother's acting was
distasteful to her, and she suppressed the end of her sentence.

With a degree of artistic instinct the lady divined her step-daughter's
thoughts. "You had better study your part," she said, rising. "And,
besides, I want you to trim my lace overdress with fresh ribbons; you
will have too much to do to-morrow to attend to it."

"There comes papa!" exclaimed Lisbeth, who had gone to the window and
was looking out. "He is just crossing the street." And she was hurrying
out of the room, when her mother called her back.

"Stay where you are!" she said. "You must not disturb papa now; we are
just going to the theatre. My hat and wrap, Johanna, and my gloves; be
quick, be quick!" And beginning to sing 'Joyous and sorrowing,' with a
languishing expression she took from her step-daughter the articles
brought to her and left the room.

Johanna sat down and went on with her sewing. She heard her father's
step in the anteroom, heard his sonorous voice. How many would be
delighted, enthralled, inspired by that voice this evening! She alone,
his most enthusiastic, rapt admirer, could not enjoy it. Tears rose to
her eyes and dropped unheeded upon her busy hands.

"Tell me a story," Lisbeth begged, standing beside her sister at the
window. "Oh, you are crying!" she added distressed as she looked round.
"What is the matter?"

"Nothing, darling," Johanna replied, hastily wiping her eyes. "What
shall I tell you? Cinderella, or Snowdrop and the Dwarfs?"

"No, no! nothing about bad step-mothers," the little girl exclaimed; and
then, with her eyes opened to their widest extent, she went on: "Only
think, Lina says that mamma is a step-mother,--so stupid of her,--my
dear pretty mamma. Friedrich laughed at her, and told her it was not
true; but then he is just as stupid himself, for he told her you were
not my sister, only an adopted child, and I won't have it; you shall be
my sister!"

She stamped her little foot. Johanna took her in her arms. "Hush,
darling; I am really your sister," she said, stroking the little curly
head.

"Then why were you not always with me?" Lisbeth went on, pettishly. "All
the sisters I know are always together."

"I was far away from here, at boarding-school," Johanna replied. "Papa
sent me there when my poor dear mother died, and he did not know what to
do with me. He travelled about from one town to another; and then he
married your mamma, and then you were born, and he has grown very
famous. I think he had almost forgotten me----"

Here old Lina, Lisbeth's former nurse, entered.

"Fraeulein, a gentleman wishes to see you," she said, handing Johanna a
card.

"Dr. Ludwig Werner," the girl read, and started up with a joyous
exclamation. "Uncle, dear uncle!" she cried, and hurried into the
antechamber, where, however, instead of the old gentleman whom she had
expected to see, she was met by a young man.

"Johanna!" he exclaimed, with evident emotion, and he would have clasped
her in his arms, but she retreated and only gave him her hand. He
laughed, half confusedly, half derisively.

"It is you!" she said, and her voice, too, trembled. "I thought it was
your father. Pray come in."

She led the way to the drawing-room. Lina, who was standing holding
Lisbeth by the hand at the dressing-room door, looked after her in
surprise. How could Fraeulein Johanna receive so familiarly a young man
who paid visits in a shooting-jacket and shabby crush hat?

He himself became conscious of the contrast that he presented to his
surroundings as soon as he entered the drawing-room. As he looked about
him in the luxurious apartment, now lit up by the last rays of the
September sun, all trace of tenderness vanished from his face, leaving
there only the cynical expression which Johanna knew so well.

"And this is now your home," he said. "I begin to understand,--I have
not been able to do so hitherto. And you yourself,--are you as changed
as your surroundings?"

He had stepped out upon the balcony with her, and as he spoke looked at
her fixedly. There was no change in the grave unembarrassed expression
of the girl's large gray eyes as she returned his gaze.

"What have you been unable to understand?" she asked.

"How you could leave us and come hither--to this house----"

"To my father's house?" she interrupted him, and her eyes flashed. "Let
me tell you how it happened," she went on more gently, "and you will
easily comprehend."

They stood leaning against the balustrade of the balcony. The shady
little garden beneath them, the golden light of evening streaming from
the western sky awakened the same memory in each, but Johanna alone gave
it utterance. "Do you remember," she asked, "how we stood at your garden
wicket the evening before you left Lindenbad and watched the setting
sun? It was not quite two years ago, and yet how much has happened since
then! you have made a home both in Paris and in London."

"A home!" he interrupted her; "no, Johanna, not for a moment. I worked
hard in London and Paris, I studied day and night, looking neither to
the right nor to the left, for I had but one aim, one desire,--to return
to my home well skilled in my profession. I may have become a skilful
physician, but my home is desolate,--my mother dead,--you here."

"Your dear mother!" Johanna whispered, and her eyes filled with tears.
He did not see them.

"If I had been at home you should not have gone," he went on; "but my