Neither spoke further. They soon reached the house, entering by a side-door while the barouche was driving away from the front. A servant informed them that the ladies and the Herr Councillor were in the conservatory, in the Frau President's apartments.

Kitty had regained her self-possession. She handed her card to the footman with a "For the Herr Councillor."

"So formal?" asked Doctor Bruck, smiling, as the lackey moved noiselessly away and vanished.

"So formal," she assented, gravely. "The greater the distance preserved, the better. It would scarcely become me to present myself familiarly here. I am even afraid that my unannounced arrival may cause the 'Herr Councillor' some embarrassment."

She was not mistaken. The councillor came rushing from within, almost stumbling over the threshold in his eagerness, exclaiming, "Good heavens, Kitty!"

His surprise was ridiculous, for he evidently looked to see his ward's face two feet nearer the ground than he found it; and this well-grown, graceful figure advancing towards him said, with an inclination full of womanly pride,—

"Dear Moritz, do not be angry with me for not complying with your suggestions. Indeed, I am rather too big to give you the trouble of coming for me."

He stood astounded. "You are right, Kitty. The time is past when I could lead you by the hand," said he, slowly, as if lost in contemplation of her face, which was bathed in a rosy blush. "Well, you are heartily welcome!" Then, giving his hand to Bruck, he added, "Ah, you met in the hall. I must present you——"

"Don't trouble yourself, Moritz; I have attended to all that," the girl interrupted him. "The Herr Doctor was paying his visit to Susie when I reached the mill."

The councillor's face lengthened. "You went first to the mill then?" he asked, surprised. "But, my dear child, Grandmamma Urach was most amiably ready to receive you, and naturally expected that you would come directly to her, instead of which you have been first to your old flame Susie! Pray say nothing about it within," he added, in a hurried whisper.

"Do you seriously desire that I should not?" The firm clear, girlish tone contrasted strangely with his timid whisper. "I cannot deny it if I should be questioned. I really do not understand concealment, Moritz——" She paused a moment, startled at the sudden flush that overspread his face, but concluded resolutely, "If I have done wrong, I will confess it: it cannot cost me my head."

"Oh, if you take my well-meant hint so tragically, there is nothing more to be said," he replied at once, with some irritation. "It will not cost you your head, to be sure, but it will imperil your position in my house. Just as you please, however. Judge for yourself what success will await your direct 'up-and-down' tongue in our refined circles."

His tone had already changed to playfulness; and, before anything further could be said to alter his amiable mood, he gallantly offered his arm, and conducted her to the former dining-hall, adjoining the conservatory, and opened the door.

Here was no longer the pleasant dining-room, with its comfortable old-fashioned leather-covered furniture. The wall that had once separated it from the conservatory had disappeared, and in its place slender pillars upheld the arched ceiling, which was painted with brilliant colours, after the Moorish style. Below, a grating of delicate gilt-bronze tracery ran from pillar to pillar, separating the mosaic floor of the Moorish room from the white sand and green sod of the conservatory. Behind this grating there was a wealth of greenery and bloom: tufts of May-flower and Parma violets grouped about the feet of dark laurels, and dragon-trees, with hosts of metallic-leaved decorative plants,—all this embowered, framed in, as it were, by the pillars, around which were twined clematis-vines, that wreathed with white and lilac flowers the slender shafts up to the graceful arches they supported.

Between the two centre pillars Flora was standing, still in her driving-dress, apparently on the point of leaving the room. The fountain in the conservatory showed its silver spray just above the plumes in her hat. One small gloved hand lifted the heavy brown velvet skirt, which the evening light tinged with faint gold, while the other, from which the glove had been withdrawn, rested lightly upon the pillar beside her, as delicate and fair as the white clematis flower that hung beside it.

As Kitty entered, she first opened her blue eyes wide with astonishment, then half dropped the lids in a keen, inquiring glance, while a sarcastic smile hovered upon her lips.

"Guess, Flora, who this is!" exclaimed the councillor.

"No need to puzzle long over that riddle; it is Kitty, who has made the journey alone," she replied, in her careless yet decided manner. "It would be impossible for any one who knew old Frau Sommer to doubt for a moment that this stout girl, with a face like a rosy-cheeked apple, is her grandchild; her eyes and hair, however, are strikingly like Clotilde's, Moritz."

She lightly disengaged herself from the hanging flowers, approached her sister, and, lifting the girl's chin, kissed her lips. Yes, this was the same incomparable Flora; but her long-continued sway over the hearts of men had robbed her actions of feminine tenderness. With the same negligence with which she tendered a kiss to her sister after a separation of six years, she greeted the doctor with a "Good-evening, Bruck," extending her hand to him, not as if he were her lover, but rather as though he were some fellow-student. He pressed slightly the hand thus given, and acquiesced in its instant withdrawal.

This outward reserve between the lovers seemed to be an understood affair. Flora turned gaily towards the conservatory, exclaiming, with a mocking smile, "Grandmamma, our heiress presents herself to the admiring gaze of yourself and your friends a month earlier than she was expected."

At Flora's first words the Frau President made her appearance from behind a group of camellias. Without being aware of it herself, perhaps, she had been watching the new-comer with that keen attention which most people are apt to bestow upon one whom men dub a favourite of fortune. Flora's half-malicious remark quickly altered this expression, however. The old lady knitted her brows disapprovingly, and a delicate flush tinged her pale face. "I do not remember having displayed any extraordinary interest in your sister's heiress-ship," she said, coldly, with a stern glance of reproof. "If I take great pleasure in Kitty's arrival, and welcome her most cordially, it is because she is my dear lost Mangold's daughter, and your sister."

She approached Kitty with outstretched hands, as if to embrace her, but the girl courtesied profoundly and formally, as if presented for the first time to her father's haughty mother-in-law. A keen observer would have seen in her conduct a shy recoil from all contact, but the Frau President apparently regarded it as simply indicative of profound respect. She withdrew her hands, and touched the girl's forehead with her lips. "Did you really come alone?" she asked, and her eyes turned towards the door, as if half fearing the entrance of some unwelcome companion to her guest.

"Quite alone. I wished for once to try my wings unaided, and my Frau Doctor willingly consented." As if unconsciously, she passed her slender fingers across her forehead where the Frau President's cold lips had rested for an instant.

"Ah, that I can easily believe; there I recognize old Lukas," Frau von Urach rejoined, with a gentle laugh of irony. "She, too, was always very independent. Your good father spoiled her a little, my child. She did as she chose; of course only what was right——"

"And sensible, and therefore papa was glad to intrust his wild young colt to her care," Kitty added, with all the frank gaiety natural to her. This freedom of manner, however, seemed to produce an unfavourable impression.

The Frau President slightly shrugged her shoulders. "Your father certainly had your welfare at heart, my dear Kitty, and I made it a rule never to object to any of his plans. But his nature was eminently refined; he thought much of a due sense of decorum. Might he not, perhaps, have slightly disapproved of his daughter's dropping down thus, sans gÊne, unceremoniously in the midst of a household?"

"Likely enough," Kitty replied. "But papa would remember what blood runs in this daughter's veins,"—and there was a wayward gleam in her brown eyes. "'To wander when and where it would, ever beseemed the miller's blood,' Frau President."

The councillor cleared his throat and carefully smoothed his silky moustache, while the Frau President looked as dismayed as if an icy blast had suddenly affronted her delicate face, and Flora burst into a laugh. "O child of mortality, you are delightfully naÏve!" she cried, clapping her hands "Yes, yes,—'To wander is the miller's joy,'" she quoted. "Only let our youngest make her dÉbut with such words on her lips at Moritz's next grand soirÉe, grandmamma, and see how every one will stare!" She looked at the old lady with merry malice, but Frau von Urach had entirely regained her self-possession.

"I trust to your sister's inborn tact, my child," she said, as she extended her hand in welcome to the doctor, smiling as she did so a smile that just showed the tips of her teeth through her drawn lips and left one in doubt whether it were sweet or sour.

"Tact, tact,—of much use that will be," Flora repeated, shaking her head mockingly. "Her miller tendencies are just as much inborn. The worthy Lukas has failed to inoculate her with a trifle of worldly wisdom,—there's the rub. Indeed, I am really glad you are alone, Kitty; I am sure we shall like you far better than if you were pinned to the apron of your prosaic old governess."

Kitty had taken off her cap; the warm, odorous air had flushed her cheeks. Thus, her head crowned with thick golden-brown braids, she looked still taller.

"Prosaic? My Frau Doctor?" she cried, gaily. "No more poetical woman lives."

"Indeed? Raves about the moon, I suppose, copies sentimental verses, etc., or even composes them herself,—eh?"

The young girl's bright eyes were riveted for a moment upon the face of the mocking speaker. "No, she does not copy verses, but quantities of her husband's manuscript, because the printers of the medical periodicals declare that they cannot possibly decipher his hieroglyphics," she said, after a short pause. "She writes neither verses nor romances: she has not the time; and yet she is full of poetry. Ah, you smile just as you used to do, Flora, with those deep lines at the corners of your mouth; but I no longer want to run away from the sneer. There is a combative vein in me, and I maintain that there is real poetry in the way in which my dear Lukas always knows how to grasp the truest and best side of life, in her knowledge of how to make home lovely and attractive, with beauty of various kinds peeping out from every corner, and in the talent she shows for making her husband, myself, and her chosen circle of friends content and happy."

As she finished, a shower of fresh violets came raining against her breast, whence they fell to the floor.

"Brava, Kitty!" cried Henriette. She was standing in the conservatory, close to the grating, her pale hands pressed to her panting bosom. "I should like to have my arms about your neck this minute, but—just look at me—would it not be ridiculous? You so thoroughly healthy, body and mind, and I——" Her voice failed her.

Kitty threw down the cap she had in her hand and flew to her. She tenderly embraced the poor, weak form, wisely suppressing the tears that were ready to flow at sight of her sister's emaciated face.

Flora bit her lip. "Our youngest" had not only gained dignity of appearance, but her clear eyes and outspoken tongue gave token also of a courageous independence of thought and of speech that might possibly be inconvenient at times. She was aware of a sudden foreboding that with the advent of this vigorous girl a shadow was to fall upon her path. She hastily took off her hat and passed her fingers through the curls that had been flattened against her temples. "Did you really bring that poetic traveller's-bundle all the way from Dresden?" she asked, drily, with a glance at the knotted handkerchief hanging upon Kitty's arm.

The girl untied it and held out the dove to Henriette. "This little patient belongs to you," she said. "The poor thing has been shot in the wing. It fell upon the pavement in the mill-yard."

This betrayed her visit to the mill, but Frau von Urach did not appear to have heard her last words; she pointed indignantly to the wounded bird, and said to the councillor, in a tone of reproach, "That is the fourth, Moritz."

"And my pet besides, my little Silver-crest!" exclaimed Henriette, brushing away a tear of grief and vexation.

The councillor was quite pale with anger and dismay. "Dear grandmamma, I pray you do not blame me!" he cried, almost with violence. "I do my very best to trace these abominable outrages to their source, and to prevent them, but their perpetrators are concealed in the ranks of two hundred angry men,"—he shrugged his shoulders,—"and there is nothing to be done. Therefore I have repeatedly entreated Henriette to confine her doves until the excitement is over."

"Then it is we who are to submit? Better and better," said the old lady, satirically; and, as she spoke, she loosened and adjusted the cloud of lace about her face and throat, as if her agitation made her insufferably warm. "Can you not see, Moritz, that such compliance fairly challenges insolence? They will soon tire of permitted dove-shooting, and aim at some nobler game."

"Why dress the matter in such phrases, grandmamma? They themselves do not scruple to speak plainly," Flora remarked, carelessly. "My maid found another threatening letter on the window-sill when she opened the shutters this morning. She was forced to pick up the dirty scrap of paper with the tongs to let me read it, and it is now in her room, in case you wish it preserved, Moritz. Of course it contains nothing new,—the same old story! I should really like to know why these men honour me so especially with their hatred of a class."

Kitty could not help thinking that in this case the hatred was not so much of a class as of an individual. She could easily understand how this queenly figure, apparelled in rich garments, with scornful lines about her mouth and a masculine address, might well be held responsible by outsiders for all that emanated from the house.

"Their low attacks are all the more ridiculous, since I am particularly interested in the social question," Flora continued, with a short laugh, "and I have given to the world several telling articles in favour of the working-classes."

"Nothing can be effected nowadays by mere writing," Doctor Bruck said, from the window where he was standing. "The most gifted pens have written unweariedly upon the subject, and the waves of popular agitation rise higher and higher, and float all their theories from the paper."

Every eye turned towards him. "Ah! and what is to be done, then?" Flora asked, sharply.

"Meet the people and their demands face to face. What avails it to collect laboriously all the evidence 'for and against' from the mass of memorials and pamphlets that cumber your writing-table——"

"Oh, pray——" And her eyes lit up with sudden fire.

"And add your mite to the pile of dead published matter?" he went on, undeterred. "These people will scarcely read your articles, and if they should, what good would it do them? Words cannot build homesteads for them. The larger part of the solution of this problem belongs to the women of the families of our capitalists, to their mild influence in modifying masculine severity, their gentle mediation, their wisdom. But very few take the trouble to reflect upon the matter, or, what is more important than all else, to question their own hearts. They require at the hands of the men the means for providing for their needs, which at the present day are almost boundless, and never consider that the elements of a fearful conflict are gathering and growing at their very doors."

The Frau President slowly passed her slender hands down the satin folds of her gown, and, without heeding the last remark, said, complacently, "I like to give, but I am not used to put my alms directly into the hands of my beneficiaries myself, and thus it may easily occur that the number and value of my charities are not known. I am quite willing to have them ignored, even although I am thus made responsible, as it were, for the barbarities to which we are daily exposed."

"These barbarities are detestable. No one can condemn them more severely than I," Doctor Bruck rejoined, in a tone as cold as her own, "but——"

"Well, 'but'? You still maintain that we women of the capitalists' families have provoked them?"

"Yes, Frau President. You have deterred the capitalist from coming to the assistance of his people when their demand was not unreasonable, not one of those extravagant requirements that at present cast suspicion and discredit upon the cause of an entire party. They did not ask for charity, but simply to be allowed, with the help of their employer, to struggle upwards to a happier daily life."

The old lady tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and said, kindly, but in a curt, decisive tone, evidently intended to cut short all discussion, "You are an idealist, Herr Doctor."

"Only a philanthropist," he rejoined, with a faint smile, and took his hat to go.

Flora had turned her back to him, and walked to the other window. There never was a woman's face more fitted to express enmity than was that clear-cut profile, that mouth so closely shut over the teeth. Had not the man plainly said that she had laboriously sought to collect the ideas of others?—she, with her talents! To be sure, she had never soiled her dainty foot with the dust of her brother-in-law's factory; it was true that she knew nothing of the life of those people whom the clamour for reform had assembled beneath one banner, where they were grown to be a power that thrust itself like a wedge into social order, threatening to shatter it. And why need she know by sight and contact what she described? Nonsense! Of what use, then, were intellect and imagination? Until to-day the doctor had never uttered a syllable with regard to her literary efforts,—"from timid reverence," she had supposed,—and now he suddenly treated her work with such scant courtesy,—he! "I cannot conceive, grandmamma," she exclaimed, with flashing eyes, "how you can dignify him with the title of idealist. To my mind, Bruck handles the great subject prosaically enough. According to his plan, we must instantly strip ourselves of every elegance and comfort, and dress in sackcloth and ashes; never must we indulge in intellectual pursuits, but must concoct soup for the poor. To insist upon quiet and retirement in our own park is a deadly sin; of course we must encourage the hopeful school-children to romp and play directly underneath our windows, etc., etc.; and if we are not docile, he threatens us with a ghost at our doors." She laughed a short, hard laugh. "Our philanthropist overshoots the mark terribly with these sympathies of his. If the conflict that he foretells ever really comes to pass, the ghost will make as short work with him as with us."

"I have not much to lose," the doctor said, with a smile.

Flora hastily approached him. Her curls stirred lightly, and her heavy velvet skirt swept the marble floor.

"Oh, since this morning that is not true, Bruck," she said, ironically. "You are a real-estate owner, Moritz tells me. Seriously, have you fulfilled your yesterday's threat and purchased that wretched barracks on the other side of the river?'

"My threat?"

"What else can I call your presenting to me such a picture of the future? You have, as you spoke of doing yesterday, invested your savings in a spot that is to me the ne plus ultra of desolation, poverty, and repulsive ugliness. You certainly cannot have possessed yourself of this gem simply to feast your eyes upon its beauties, and therefore I ask you seriously, 'Who is to live there?'"

"You never need cross the threshold."

"I certainly never shall,—you may rely upon that. Rather——" The glance with which the doctor raised his hand to interrupt her was a riddle hard to read, but it had such power in it that it silenced those beautiful lips.

"I purchased the house for my aunt, only reserving one room in it for my use,—a corner where I can enjoy a leisure hour of study amid rural surroundings," he said, immediately, and far more placidly than could have been anticipated from the former expression of his face.

"Ah, I wish you joy of it! A special summer retreat! And in winter, Bruck?"

"In winter I must content myself with the green room, which you have assigned me in our future dwelling."

"To tell the truth, that house does not please me. There is such constant noise from the street about a corner house, it would greatly disturb me when I wanted to work."

"Well, then, I will simply pay off the house-agent, and look for another," he rejoined, with imperturbable equanimity.

Flora turned away with a shrug, so that Kitty could look directly into her face. It seemed as if she would have stamped upon the floor with vexation, while her head was thrown back and her eyes sought the ceiling, as if to say, "Gracious heaven, is there no way to reach him?"

At that moment the Frau President rang the bell so sharply that the sound echoed from the end of the long corridor. The old lady looked greatly aggrieved; explanations so devoid of all taste and tact as these should never take place in her presence. "You can scarcely have a high opinion of the hospitality and breeding of your brother's household, Kitty," she said to the young girl. "No one has taken off your travelling-jacket or offered you a chair; you are forced instead, whether you will or not, to listen to useless discussions, and left standing upon the cold marble, while warm rugs are at hand." She pointed, as she spoke, to two opposite corners of the room, furnished with luxurious chairs and lounges and laid with costly Smyrna rugs, and then she gave orders to the servant who entered to instruct the housekeeper with regard to apartments for the guest.

Thus the bystanders were relieved of the disagreeable sensation left in their minds by the sharp interchange of words between the lovers. The councillor hastened to relieve his ward of her jacket, and Henriette, her wasted cheeks flushed with a feverish colour, left the conservatory to attend to her dove.

"Will you not stay to tea, Herr Doctor?" Frau von Urach asked the physician, as he came to take leave of her. He excused himself on the plea of visits to patients,—a plea which Flora heard with a sarcastic smile. This, however, he did not appear to notice. He shook hands with her and with the councillor; to Kitty he made a chivalric and respectful inclination, not at all as if to a new young sister-in-law: she was still a stranger to him, and the others appeared to find this view of the matter entirely correct. Henriette left the room with him.

"My dear Flora, I must for the future strictly forbid the recurrence of such distasteful scenes as this which we have just been compelled to witness," the Frau President said, in a stern voice and with a deep frown, as soon as the door had closed upon the pair. "You have reserved to yourself entire freedom to attain your end in the manner that shall best please yourself; so far so good,—you have hitherto encountered not the slightest opposition on my part; but I protest earnestly as soon as you show an inclination to fight out the wretched affair in my presence. As I said before, that I strictly forbid! Must I repeat——"

"Dear grandmamma," the young lady interrupted her, in a tone of contemptuous banter, "do not repeat! I know it all. Commit murder or arson, if you will, in this house, only see that the Frau President Urach arises like a phoenix from the ashes. Forgive me, grandmamma; I will never do so again. The house is large enough; I need not carry out my designs directly in your sight. If my work were only not made so immensely difficult! I am afraid that some fine day I shall lose patience and——"

"Flora!" the councillor exclaimed, in a voice expressing both warning and entreaty.

"Yes, yes, Herr von RÖmer, I perfectly understand that I must pay due regard to your new honours. Heavens! how my poor shoulders are weighted down! And why should I do penance because hearts cling to me like burrs?"

She took her hat, and gathered up her train to go,—then paused as she passed Kitty.

"You see, my dear," she said, putting her forefinger beneath her sister's chin and turning her face up to her, "this all comes of a poor girl's giving way to sentiment for a moment and imagining herself in love. She suddenly finds herself in a trap, and admits sorrowfully that the trite old doctrine, 'See, ye who join in endless union, that heart with heart be in communion,' contains a terrible truth. Think of your sister, and take care of yourself, child."

She left the room, and Kitty looked after her in wide-eyed wonder. What a strange fiancÉe her beautiful sister was!