When she turned round, the doctor was still standing where she had left him, but his gaze was directed towards the bridge, and he had grown slightly pale. His profile, with the tightly-compressed lips, reminded her of the moment in the castle mill when she had asked him about her grandfather's death; he was struggling with intense emotion of some kind. Involuntarily her eyes followed the direction of his own, and she could not have been more startled and shocked by the apparition of the drowned woman of former times than she was by the sight of her beautiful sister advancing across the ancient structure with as easy a grace as if she had gone hence on the previous evening with a gay "au revoir." Could it be? She glided lightly over the place where she had declared herself separated forever from the man whom she despised; only a few hours had passed since she had heaped every epithet of scorn and contempt upon his home, which she had vowed never again to enter; and here she was, with her lovely, smiling face, confronting the "dreary barn," her little feet confidently pressing the grassy paths. No wave rolled higher, no breeze stirred, to whisper to her of wrong, wilful treachery, and miserable inconstancy, while the sunshine played about her graceful form, illumining it as if she were of all earth's children the most dear.

She had on a dark dress. Rich black lace covered her fair curls, and, lying upon the snowy neck, fell in long ends over her shoulders and down her back, like the drooping wings of an angel of night. Behind her walked the councillor; he looked very animated, and was conducting the Frau President with an air of such respect that Kitty in all seriousness began to wonder whether she had only dreamed his contemptuous looks of the morning and his expressions with regard to the "old cat" and her "velvet paw."

The doctor slowly advanced to meet the approaching group, while Kitty stood by the shed as if rooted to the spot, still unconsciously holding fast the bolt which she had just pushed home. She saw the usual greetings exchanged. Nothing extraordinary happened; no angry word was uttered. The councillor warmly congratulated the doctor; the Frau President graciously smiled, showing the white tips of her teeth;—and Flora? For one moment her cheeks were dyed with a rosy flush, and her glance, usually so self-assured, wandered from the doctor's countenance to the ground at his feet, but she extended her hand with her accustomed air of good-fellowship, and the tips of her fingers were taken, if not retained, very much as they had been upon Kitty's arrival, and when Doctor Bruck turned round, his features were once more composed to marble.

As she entered the garden, Flora had hastily scanned her young sister from head to foot, smiling scornfully the while, and then turning to make some apparently malicious remark to the councillor; but now, upon her nearer approach, Kitty saw gleaming in her eyes suppressed anger, amounting to a kind of hostility.

"Well, Kitty? You seem to be perfectly at ease here," she exclaimed; "you really look quite at home, as if the keys to every drawer and closet were hanging at your girdle."

The young girl mode no reply as she slowly turned from the door she had just bolted and gazed at her sister. Was there no shame in this wayward creature? no shrinking from the sound of her own voice here upon this spot? But yesterday she had declared, "This house shall never again see mo within its walls," and now here she stood, about to enter it and to return to the "sordid surroundings."

"Does Flora's jest annoy you, my dear child?" the councillor asked, hastily approaching her. He drew her hand through his arm. "Console yourself with the knowledge of the charming picture you presented among the hens and chickens. Only wait, and you shall possess the finest collection of them that can be got together."

The Frau President, who was ascending the steps, paused a moment, as if her breath had suddenly failed her; her head, trembling nervously, was turned for an instant with an of contempt towards the tender guardian, and then she hastened her entrance into the house. "Brainless fop, he will never cease to be the vulgar bagman!" she muttered, angrily, to Flora, who put her handkerchief to her lips to hide a laugh.

Kitty, as if unconsciously, let her hand remain within her brother-in-law's arm. She scarcely heard what he was saying; she did not observe Doctor Bruck's mute surprise as he stood motionless and allowed the pair to pass him: she only saw Flora's hand, the one in which she held the handkerchief to hide her laughter, and which was covered with a delicate lace mitten that harmonized well with the lace of her dress and by contrast made her hand more snowy white than ever. The diamonds had disappeared from the third finger, where the "simple circlet of gold that weighed upon her like iron" again gleamed dully through the meshes of the lace. Impossible! It lay beneath the waters of the rolling stream. Kitty suddenly felt as if all about her were unreal; her eyes and ears were no longer to be trusted.

"What does this mean?" the Frau President asked, with a frown, pointing to the assemblage in the hall of the furniture from the villa.

"I thought it best to humour Henriette in her desire that these articles should be removed from her room," said Dr. Bruck.

"She was perfectly right. Begging your pardon, grandmamma, it was a ridiculous idea to crowd the sick-room with all those things," Flora remarked, with a shrug. "The poor child is often oppressed for breath; this well-stuffed furniture must have been stifling."

Her grandmother evidently meditated a severe retort, but the doctor was present, and the maid was standing at the door of the kitchen; so she refrained, and went on to the sick-room. As she entered it, she started. Henriette was leaning out of bed, so wasted and pale, and yet with such an eager expectancy in her large wide-opened eyes, that the Frau President feared she was again delirious. The invalid's cool greeting relieved her, however, and she saw that the look which had startled her was directed towards Flora, who had entered the room directly behind her.

The beautiful woman instantly went up to the dean's widow, who had arisen at the entrance of the visitors, and grasped her hand, as if she would thus atone for the neglected farewell of the previous evening, and then she turned to the bed. "Well, dear," she said to the sick girl, "you are wonderfully better to-day, we hear——"

"And you, Flora?" Henriette interrupted her, with irrepressible impatience, as she accorded an absent greeting to the councillor, who stood by her bedside.

Flora suppressed a mocking smile. "I? Oh, tolerably well only! Yesterday's fright is still telling upon my nerves, but my self-control and firm will stand me in stead. Yesterday I was indeed in a wretched state; I was really ill, almost insane, I verily believe, with nervous agitation; at all events, I have but an indistinct remembrance of what happened after that terrible walk,—and no wonder! Daniel in the lions' den was scarcely worse off than I surrounded by those furies——"

"But Kitty defended you nobly," Henriette said. "She stood like a shield between you and them,—my poor, brave Kitty! Moritz, they tore the clothes from her back and pulled down her hair——"

"This beautiful hair!" the dean's widow said, tenderly, as she stroked the shining waves that rippled back from the girl's brow.

"Well, yes; the furies did not deal very gently with her," Flora admitted, with a frown; "but I must decline taking all the blame for it upon my shoulders. It was mostly due to her mania for wearing stiff silk dresses. Those people envy us our wealth and elegance; her silk dress irritated the women, and they dinned into her ears, and unfortunately into ours also, how her grandmother went barefoot, how the castle miller was once only a mill servant, and amassed the money, now hers, by usury; and various other edifying facts. Kitty's appearance upon the scene greatly increased our danger; their indignation against the wealthy heiress was unbounded. Am I not right, Kitty?"

"Yes, Flora," the young girl replied, in a trembling voice, with a bitter smile. "I must work hard indeed to atone for the wrong done by my grandfather."

While Flora was speaking, the Frau President seemed to dilate with satisfaction. This laying bare of a scandalous pedigree was like music to her ears. She looked fixedly at the councillor. It was impossible that the new-made nobleman should not shrink at the thought that people would point at his wife and whisper everywhere the tale of her descent and of how her fortune was acquired. "Nonsense, Kitty! that sounds too ridiculously sensitive and silly," she said, shaking her head. "What do you propose to do?"

Flora laughed. "Open her safe, of course, and scatter her stocks abroad among the people."

"As Flora did yesterday the contents of her purse in defence of her charming complexion," Henriette remarked, with an air of easy banter. Her rising indignation conquered for awhile her burning desire to see Flora in the dust at the doctor's feet.

"I should never be guilty of such folly," Kitty said, calmly, but seriously, to Flora, who bit her lip at Henriette's remark. "If a curse rests upon the money——"

The councillor's laugh interrupted her. "Never vex yourself about that, child. A curse! I tell you there is a charm about your money; the dividends from some new investments I have just made for you are enormous."

The Frau President's eyelids, usually drooping over her eyes in aristocratic lassitude, opened wide at this expression. The word "dividend" had power to kindle those eyes with an eager glitter which the desire for conquest in her time of youth and beauty could scarcely have called forth.

"Enormous?" she repeated. "Mine are by no means so large. I will sell out, and invest in this new stock."

"That can easily be arranged, dearest grandmamma; I will take the necessary steps immediately. Yes, yes, the saying is quite true, 'Where doves alight there doves will flock,' and never truer than in the present wondrous age. The capitalist is a rock upon which the waves toss up treasure of their own accord——"

"That is not the opinion of the prudent men of the day, Moritz," said Doctor Bruck. When Henriette made her eager retort he had advanced to the bedside and had taken her hand soothingly in both his own, and he was still standing thus. He was in full dress beneath his light overcoat, and looked a most distinguished figure, but in the face which he now turned full upon those present there was perceptible a certain strange look of suffering which Kitty had noticed to-day for the first time. "There has been a good deal of mistrust lately about these sudden gains, and people begin to call them by a very ugly name——"

"Swindling, I suppose you mean," the councillor gaily interrupted him. "My dearest doctor, I have the highest respect for your scientific attainments, but you must permit me to excel you in a knowledge of business affairs. You are a most distinguished surgeon, and have just achieved fame——"

Henriette here sat upright, and asked, eagerly, panting as if almost overcome by her feeling of triumph, "Do you know that, Flora?"

"Of course I know it, you silly child, although the Herr Doctor has hitherto not thought it worth while to give me any personal information of his fortunate cure at L——," Flora lightly made answer, while her eyes boldly and as if in challenge encountered Henriette's gaze. "I also know that the sun of princely favour has suddenly shone full upon him in a most unexampled fashion. Of course this is still a court secret, to be kept even from his betrothed." Her lips parted in an enchanting smile, and the rosy flush that tinted her cheek at her last words became her charmingly.

Henriette fell back disappointed among her pillows,—even she had been mistaken in this chameleon nature.

The Frau President, standing beside the doctor, tapped him almost affectionately upon the shoulder. Never before had she treated him with such condescending familiarity. "May we not know something further? Are the preliminaries not yet arranged?" she asked, in a gentle, flattering tone.

"He has just returned from an interview with the prince," his aunt said, never turning her gaze from her darling, her eyes beaming with proud affection.

"Ah, then the report that Herr von BÄr has been pensioned off is true?" the old lady asked, with well-feigned indifference, masking her eagerness.

"I do not know; that is no affair of mine," the doctor quietly replied. "The prince desires that as long as I remain here I shall take charge of his chronic inflammation of the foot——"

"As long as you remain here, Bruck?" Flora interrupted him, quickly. "Are you going away?"

"I shall establish myself in L—— in the beginning of October," he coldly answered, without looking at her. His eyes were fixed upon the budding apple-tree outside of the window.

"What! you have declined a position and a title at our court?" the Frau President exclaimed, clasping her hands in amazement.

"I am not permitted to decline the title." An ironical smile flitted across his features. "Evidently his Serene Highness thinks it contrary to all the laws of etiquette to be attended by an untitled physician. He insists upon making me Hofrath."

As he spoke, his aunt, struggling against her evident emotion, held out her hand to him, and he—usually reserve itself—put his arm around her slender form and clasped her close to his breast. The suffering, the calumniation, which they two had steadfastly endured together isolated them, in the moment of recompense, from the rest of the circle.

Flora turned away and walked to the window, biting her lip until it nearly bled; one could see how she longed to thrust away the faithful friend from the place which the false love had forfeited.

"But he is going away, aunt," Henriette said, in a low, hoarse tone.

"Yes, to where fortune and fame await him," the old lady answered, lifting her tearful face from his shoulder. "I can gladly stay behind in the home which his filial love has provided for me, if I know him appreciated, honoured, and esteemed where he is. And, besides, my mission is almost at an end,—another is to take my place." The tenderness of her tone gave way to profound seriousness, as her eyes, usually so gentle in their expression, looked almost sternly towards the beautiful woman at the window. "She, with her rich endowments of intellect, will appreciate more fully than I can the sanctity and, at the same time, the frequent trials of his profession, and will surely create for him a home whither he may flee from the cares that beset his public career, and where affection and serenity will abide uniformly." The emphasis she placed upon the last word told Kitty that the widow had observed, and ascribed to caprice, Flora's behaviour on the preceding day.

"That is all very charming and delightful, my dear Frau Dean, and I have no doubt that Flora will make an admirable professor's wife," the Frau President remarked, evidently piqued by the tone which the simple widow of a dean had adopted towards her grandchild; "but nowadays there can be no home without comfortable apartments, and I am having an immense amount of trouble in arranging them. I have just had a most fatiguing discussion with the cabinet-maker; he insists—Heaven knows why!—that it will be impossible to have Flora's buhl furniture, ordered months ago, finished by Whitsuntide. And Flora, too, has had trouble with her trousseau,—the workwomen have been so dilatory that it cannot be ready before the beginning of July. What is to be done?"

"We will wait," Doctor Bruck said, briefly, and took up his hat and cane to put them in the hall.

The Frau President started, and a perplexed expression crossed her countenance; but she instantly recovered herself, and, laying her hand on his arm, said, "How kind and good you are, my dear doctor, to help us thus out of our dilemma! I was afraid of encountering your opposition. Whitsuntide has been quite a nightmare to me, you so insisted upon that time."

"Yes; but my removal to L—— makes some change necessary," he said, quietly, and left the room.

"And what does Flora think?" the dean's widow asked, in an uncertain tone; she was apparently rather shocked at the doctor's cool behaviour, and the sudden, embarrassed silence on the part of the others.

Flora turned towards her a beaming countenance. "I am very glad of the postponement, since my future position is to be so different from what I had expected. There is need of much preparation and reflection. Good heavens, think of the change! A very different mode of life is looked for by the world from the wife of a famous professor from that expected of the wife of a simple doctor, Hofrath and physician to the royal household though he be." There was undeniable arrogance in her whole bearing; every word she said showed the exultation she could not suppress: she had reached the pinnacle of her most ardent aspirations.

The councillor rubbed his hands in a state of great satisfaction; he would have liked to laugh in her face. But the Frau President had some trouble to conceal her rising indignation; her grandchild evidently contemplated achieving at her husband's side a higher social position than she herself, the wife of an exalted government official, had ever attained.

"What are you talking of, Flora?" she said, with a disapproving shake of her head.

"Of my brilliant future, grandmamma," she replied, with a supercilious little smile, as she turned away with the air of one who would not by any word or look be reminded of a disagreeable past.

"And now I resign myself entirely to you, dear aunt," she said to the dean's widow, who was closely observing her every look and word. "Do with me what you will. I will obey you in everything; only show me how I can make Leo happy; I will sew, cook——" And, as she spoke, she drew off her lace mittens as if impatient to begin; but, as she did so, she made a grasp at the empty air, with a sudden exclamation of dismay,—the "simple golden circlet" had slipped from her finger. No one had heard it fall on the floor; every one looked for it, but in vain: it seemed to have vanished into air.

"It must be among your pillows, Henriette," Flora declared. She had grown quite pale. "Let me raise you up for a moment and see——"

"That I cannot allow," the dean's widow firmly interposed. "Henriette must not be disturbed, nor her position unnecessarily altered——"

"Unnecessarily," Flora repeated, reproachfully, pouting like a child. "Why, aunt, it is my betrothal-ring."

Kitty fairly trembled at these words. Was Flora really such a child of good fortune that some miracle had restored to her the ring she had flung away? or was this all a brazen falsehood? In vain did she look for an answer to this in the anxious eyes of the beautiful sphinx.

"It is an unlucky accident," the dean's widow said, "but the ring cannot be lost; we shall find it when Henriette's bed is made, and my servant shall take it over to the villa to you."

"She shall be rewarded with a handful of gold if she brings it to me this evening," declared Flora, who was evidently much disturbed.

The Frau President and the councillor seated themselves by the bedside of the sick girl, who had taken no further part in the conversation. Only once had she raised her head, with her lips opened as if to speak. When her grandmamma had said she could not understand the delay upon the part of the cabinet-maker, she had been upon the point of saying, "Because your orders have been all but countermanded." But she remembered before it was too late that the past must never again be alluded to.