vi] THE RED BARON. 307

 

boy, and now that he was my only son—the sole hope
of my house, I was by no means anxious to lose him.
At the same time, Iam bound to say that I was so
selfish and bad at heart, that so long as things went
smoothly and easily with myself, I did not much care
what became of anybody else. And as to my suc-
cessor, what, after all, did it matter to me whether it
was my son or not? J must be gone and my fun
over, anyhow, before he came to the castle and
estates, and therefore it seemed to me that as far as I
was concerned it mattered little what happened here
afterwards. The true philosophy I held to be this—to
enjoy oneself as much as possible and let other people
look out for themselves. You needn’t smile con-
temptuously. I know wow that I was wrong, and
that happiness zzws¢ depend on other people, and that
to make others happy is the best and truest way of
being happy oneself. But I didn’t know it chen, or
at all events I didn’t act upon it. So when Rudolf
disappeared I was not nearly so much grieved as
might have been expected in the case of a better man,

‘Christina, however, was inconsolable. She cried
her dear eyes out at the loss of her brother. She was
sure he was dead. Nothing could comfort her, and
as to her marriage, she would not hear of it; so
that the boy had really taken the very best way in
the world to prevent the alliance he so much disliked.
It was rather hard upon the Englander, Nothing
that he could say was of the slightest use. No—he
must bring back her brother before she would have
anything more to say to him. This was doubly hard

upon Sir Smith, because, in the first place, he had not
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