you joy! Helen, my dear, God bless you!"
With this, a warm earnest kiss. There vas no
avoiding it.

"You will come to see us at Castle Oranienberg,"
said the Baron, handing his treasure into
the carriage somewhat quickly; for the day was
cold, and sleet was beginning to fall. The noble-
looking youth stood for a moment in the portal,
and saluted the new-married pair with a smile on
his face as they drove off; and then, with the
gesture of one who felt the chill, turned away
into the town.

"How strange!" said Helen, artlessly breaking
the silence. " I was thinking of him only
last night, never dreaming I should see him. We
were together as children, George; but he grew
up, O so wild! And they brought him up to
believe he was sure of me . . . until . . .
Poor Reginald! What a lost, lost life has his
been! But how handsome he is still! I was very
fond of him, once!"—She stopped suddenly;
and a minute afterwards was prattling, half
hidden under her husband's cloak, about when
they should get to Oranienberg, and what they
should do when they got there, and how she
should be afraid of no ghost when she had him
to take care of her: " for the girls used to say,
George, that you lived among ghosts, and were
half a ghost yourself; and when you brought me
my shoe-rose home (shall I ever forget that
morning?), Lena and Lotte would lay it on the
prayer-book, to try if you had bewitched it.
Ah George! I knew better."

There was no resisting her guileless confidence,
and yet . . . Could she have wished
for the appearance of this rejected lover of hers?
—this young brilliant creature, brimful of life
and courage?—And had not her wish been
granted—else, why should he have reappeared?
Thus the grey leaf and voice. But no, no, no!
She had saved him, by some blessed Providence,
from the premature decay of an over-wrought
mind. It was nonsense!—a last relic of his
sick, suspicious, solitary fancies. So he bent
over her; and talked well-nigh as merrily as
herself (if not quite so confidingly); and so the
pair sped smoothly onward towards Oranienberg.

The bride's bower at Oranienberg was not
hung with cloth of gold, but there was a heart
of gold in it to welcome her, such as the
Schlettersheim gossips had never dreamed of. The
ecstasy of his pleasure! She was now the grave
one!—he was as blithe as a schoolboy who has
made his own, a new toy, long dreamed of, never
hoped for.—She clung to him, as some rare and
delicate bird who had fled from dark and
changeful weather into a warm breast, might do.
She loved him as a divinity, trusted to him as to
Omnipotence, confided in him as an equal.—But
why was there the shadow on his brow which
she could not remove, with all her kisses and
her smiles, and her true artless talk? Her
father had thrown her off. Well, what matter?
Her Oranienberg was a lover and a father in
one. He knew all about her one earlier heart-
trouble. ' They had laughed together about
Reginald's red cheeks, and finely-chiselled lips, and
grand curling hair. But she knew nothing of her
husband's past, in which past (far away or recent,
it mattered not) there was a shadow.—And the
pretty creature, proud of being mistress of the
grand old castle of Oranienberg, walked to and
fro, to and fro, up its passages and down its
halls, wanting no company save her husband's;
and when she was left alone, that of the little
familiar sprite, Curiosity, which has been ever
at the elbow of solitary new-married women ever
since the days of Fatima.

But he had given her his confidence. He had
consulted with her on the last summons (and
the most entreating one) which he had received
from his former friend, the Prince. And as he
and she paced down the long picture-gallery at
early twilight (the gallery well warmed, since
the English bride had loved to walk in it), they
talked of this, and of other things, on a certain
evening late in March.

She was speaking of dress, of some morsel of
scarf or necklace, or of the flower in her hair (the
bride every day wore, to please the Baron, a
flower as rare as those which had struck terror
into the hearts of the Schlettersheim women);
as she stopped underneath a faded full-length
picture:

"Ah, my bird!" said he; "you are looking
at that old lady. Well, in her time, she was a
grand brave woman—a true Oranienberg woman
—though she does wear those stiff wooden
clothes, such as Crauach always painted.—It
was she who held the last tower of the castle of
Neuburg-Schlestadt when it was besieged and
burnt, while her husband was away at the wars.
When the staircase was blazing, she was the
last to come down, and she held her only son by
the hand, and she made him walk slowly, and
she said to him: ' Your father's child must be
the last to leave the old house when he is not
there.' She was the good genius of our
family, that great lady."

What made the bride, in her turn, grow
thoughtful? An English thought of her duties?
Such thought had never been taught her by her
rakish father, by his showy companion, by the
playfellow of her childhood. She was thoughtful
with the high wishes and timid doubts of
one yearning to be worthy of companionship
with the high nature she could but in part
understand.

"If you knew," fell from her, " how some,
who might perhaps grow into Oranienberg
women, have been nurtured, you might, perhaps,
better feel—perhaps, better know . . . ."

"What can I want to know more of you than
I do know, Helen, darling? Know? There is
nothing to know about you, save yourself.—
Stiegel; what do you want? If we go, we shall
not go till Wednesday. Leave us."

"But, sir—he is come—he is an English great
lord, who says he loved the most gracious
Baroness; and he drove up, and made his way in,
and would ask no questions."

"Helen," said the Baron, "this must be your
English cousin."