From Hand to Hand

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. TEMPTER AND TEMPTED. Whilst Walter lived hidden in his woodland home, the Trombergs remained in undisputed possession of Erlenstein. The cloud that had rested upon the honour and fortunes of the family had departed when the man who had sinned so deeply lay down, weary and repentant, to rest in...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. TEMPTER AND TEMPTED. Whilst Walter lived hidden in his woodland home, the Trombergs remained in undisputed possession of Erlenstein. The cloud that had rested upon the honour and fortunes of the family had departed when the man who had sinned so deeply lay down, weary and repentant, to rest in the grave. Walter had requited his evil with such magnanimous good, that he had even succeeded in reconciling those left behind to the condition of affairs which his own inflexible will made unalterable. Hard as this might be for the mother, the two boys, accustomed as they were to look up to Walter in everything, were soon persuaded by him that their father's fault, once confessed and forgiven, was atoned, and they went forth into life with all the eager confidence that is the prerogative of youth. Walter was intoxicated with his own happiness, ?he had lost nothing, as it seemed to him, by the crime of his adopted father; there was no change in the outward circumstances of the Trombergs, ?it really was as if the fault of their father might have been buried in oblivion had there not existed a living witness to its reality. Herr von Tromberg had had an accomplice in his crime, ?a companion who had shared in his guilt but had never had part in its gains. The tempter had been a reduced notary, and the price of his assistance was the providing for the future of a little niece, a foster-child, affection for whomwas the one pure emotion saved from the wreck of a dishonoured existence. Herr Maubert was a Frenchman by birth, and had come to Germany with a younger brother when little more than a boy, to seek in his mother's native country that fortune which seemed denied him in his own land. His father, a soldier and a member of the old French noblesse, had mortally offen.