More than three months had passed, during which Kitty had studied as never before, giving hours to her music daily, and trying to find forgetfulness in devotion to duty. Henriette kept a kind of diary, which she sent every week to her sister. It told her how the life in the villa had gone on since her departure. She could "read between the lines" that the Frau President had been evidently much relieved thereby, and had established a rule in the villa more despotic than ever. Henriette told how her grandmother had praised Kitty's "thorough good taste" in what she had done, while Flora shrugged her shoulders and spoke of "school-girl's nonsense." She herself had informed the councillor of his ward's absence on the evening of the ball; he had turned quite pale with anger, and had been out of humour with her for days in consequence of her share in the affair. Flora, too, had been cross and out of sorts all that evening, for her lover had excused himself from appearing, on the plea of professional duties.

The councillor had written to Kitty announcing a visit to Dresden in June, when he had "an explanation to make;" but Henriette, as the time approached, told of his being overwhelmed with business, of the myriads of telegrams that were sent from Berlin to him as soon as he left that capital, where, indeed, he passed more time than in his home. The visit remained unpaid; a short business letter now and then was all she received from him, and her last remittance was sent through his bookkeeper,—an unprecedented occurrence.

Kitty breathed more freely,—the dreaded conflict was not to take place. Her guardian had seen from her reply to his letter that his hopes were futile, and had quietly acquiesced. The young girl might then have returned to her post as Henriette's nurse, but the doctor's wife decidedly opposed this scheme, because Kitty, as she often anxiously remarked, had returned home from her former visit much changed, having lost all her youthful spirits and the fresh colour in her cheeks. Besides, the Baroness Steiner, with her suite, had now been quartered in the villa for two months, and had left no vacant corner on the third floor.

Kitty herself shuddered at the thought of a return so long as there had been no removal to L——. She knew too well that it would be impossible for her in that circle to maintain her outward self-possession. In Dresden she was obliged to exert all her strength of character not to show that her peace of mind was fled, that she was always struggling fiercely against the sweet bewildering force that had taken up its abode in her heart, and which seemed like a crime. Henriette had never recalled her, in spite of the passionate declaration repeatedly made that she longed for her "true, strong sister;" on the contrary, she spoke with enthusiastic gratitude of the tenderness and care lavished upon her by the dean's widow. Her diary was a continued narrative, in which two people played the principal part,—the doctor and his aunt. Every occurrence in the house by the river was duly detailed, even to the untimely death of the yellow hen, a victim to a recurrence of savage hatred on the part of her enemy the house-dog; and the unusual plenty of the grapes in the garden. It was even thought worth while to tell of a "snow-white kitten, whose favorite place was the Frau Dean's own chair." These were innocent items; but the diary was usually gloomy and melancholy in tone; in some parts it read as if the pages had been wetted with tears, in others as if the pen had been guided by a hand of fire. Of the relation between Flora and the doctor not a word was said, but great distress was expressed that the latter had been so changed by the wearing anxieties of his profession: only towards his patients was he uniformly gentle and kind; in general society he had become taciturn and irritable, while in appearance every one noticed how greatly he was altered.

Thus gradually the time appointed for the marriage drew near. Flora had neglected to invite her distant half-sister. Henriette wrote that her head was full of a series of fÊtes that were being given in her honour, and that with regard to her trousseau and her marriage festivities her whims had almost driven the trades-people to despair. The invalid seemed in great distress of mind; she repeatedly dwelt upon her inability to sustain alone all the bustle and excitement of the approaching marriage. The dean's widow could be of no assistance to her at that time, since she herself was suffering greatly at the thought of a separation from her nephew, and was often absent-minded and sad. These complaints grew more and more frequent, until one evening a few days before the marriage a telegram arrived which ran, "Come instantly; I am miserable and ill."

No delay was to be thought of; even the doctor's wife consented that Kitty should go immediately; and the girl herself—she shivered in nervous dread of what was to come, and yet she exulted in the blissful thought that she should see once more the man who was—her future brother-in-law.

Again on a morning in September she found herself in the large room in the castle mill. She had come by the night train, having telegraphed to Franz to meet her. And certainly a mother's hands could not have prepared everything for her arrival more lovingly than had old Susy. The room, illumined by the green light penetrating the chestnut-boughs before the windows, was redolent with the fragrance of the heliotrope, roses, and mignonette upon the window-sills, fresh white covers had been put upon all the tables, a tempting snowy bed stood in the recess, and upon the large oaken table stood the familiar copper "machine" full of hot coffee. Even the home-made cake was ready strewn with sugar, beside the gilt china cup that had been the pride of the corner cupboard during the lifetime of the old miller's wife.

Again the girlish tread was heard upon the white scoured floor, and through the open window came the cooing of the doves and the murmur of the distant weir,—she was at home. She would visit her invalid sister from here, and upon no account accept the councillor's hospitality, in spite of the Frau President's scorn of "familiar intercourse between the villa and the mill."

Kitty was in a strange mood. Dread of her first visit to the villa; painful longing for the house by the river, the weather-cock upon the roof of which she discerned with a beating heart from her southern window, and which she might not approach; passionate impatience to see, if only once more, the tall figure which she had first seen here in the mill, and which it was torture to confess to herself, as she did daily, she had loved from that moment; all this stirred within her, in addition to the strange, inexplicable foreboding and anxiety that possessed her soul. For months the columns of the newspapers had been filled with sensational intelligence in regard to the bursting of the great swindling bubble of the day in Vienna, and shortly afterwards of a similar catastrophe in Berlin. The destruction of this modern Tower of Babel was the topic of the day in every public place, in every drawing-room; it had been discussed even in the small Æsthetic circle in Kitty's Dresden home. In the railway-carriage on the road from Dresden to M—— it had been the inexhaustible theme for conversation among her fellow-travellers, and now with her own eyes Kitty could behold one of the results of this calamity. Through the cooing of the doves and the distant murmur of the weir came the sound of excited human voices, and just behind the last chestnut the young girl had a view of the gravelled space in front of the factory. It was swarming, as she had seen it once before, with workmen, some silent and gloomy, others gesticulating wildly and talking loudly. The stock company that had purchased the factory of the councillor had failed; the officers of the law had already appeared in the building, and the employÉs had not yet recovered from the shock of the sad news.

"Yes, yes, so it goes," said Franz, as he brought in Kitty's trunk. "Those people were too well off, and they thought they deserved more,—now they will live for a while from hand to mouth, and then from bad to worse. All of them would like to pick up money off the streets; and who can blame them, when their betters do the same? He's a fortunate fellow who gets safely through the stream," he went on, slapping his pockets; "'an honest store by work made more' is my motto; no need to lie awake o' nights then. Those who don't know how to speculate had better let it alone. There's the Herr Councillor, to be sure, firm as a rock; he's too long-headed to be touched." Then, with an air of great wisdom, raising his forefinger, "Yesterday he got back from Berlin, finer than ever. I had just taken a load of corn to the station,—hey, how his black horses flew past! He understands it all. They said he had just made another lucky hit, and he looked like a man with millions at his command. He has been away for a long time, and I dare say would not have returned now but for the fine doings they are to have over there to-night."

To-night! The wedding was to take place on the next day but one, and immediately afterwards the newly-married pair were to set off upon a bridal tour. Kitty knew it, she had read it often enough in Henriette's diary, and yet the thought came to her now with a shock of terror.

"They are to have a fine time at the villa to-night," Susy said, as she handed her young mistress a cup of coffee. "I was talking yesterday with the councillor's Anton, and he says they haven't room enough for all the guests who are coming. They have built a theatre, and ever so many young ladies from town are to dress up, and the evergreens have been coming by wagon-loads to ornament the house."

The factory clock was striking eleven as Kitty walked over to the villa. The murmur of voices was still audible as she went through the mill-yard, but scarcely had the small door in the wall separating the park from the mill-garden closed behind her before an aristocratic silence reigned around.

Franz was right; one felt here that the noise and confusion of the money-market could not touch the rich man and his belongings; that the devouring waves of misfortune and ruin could not even wet the soles of his feet. Ah! there stretched the beautiful lake. It had absorbed the azure of the sky, and lay a giant sapphire of spotless purity. It had been finished thus quickly at an enormous expense of money and labour. Swans were gliding to and fro upon its placid waters, and near the shore rocked a gaily-painted boat, fastened at the end by a chain. Kitty had left the park a mass of tender spring green; now the shadows had deepened. The sun's fiery rays, pouring down in all their summer splendour, had burned away the delicate colours of the flowers of spring, and had kindled in their stead the torches of the cannas and the straight stems of the gladiolus upon every bit of lawn that peeped forth among the shrubbery.

How many hands must be employed to maintain such exquisite neatness everywhere! Not a fallen leaf lay upon the paths, not a blade of grass broke the even line of the gravelled roads, no fading blossom was left upon the bushes. And in the distance, among the groups of majestic trees, appeared the imposing faÇade of the new stables; their erection also had been so swift as to seem almost the work of magic. For all there had been expended immense sums; whatever was flung abroad in the stock market, the golden stream here seemed inexhaustible. None of the electric shocks that had wrought such destruction in the business world had been felt here.

Passing on beneath the shady arches of the linden avenue, Kitty approached the villa. Never had the fairy structure seemed to her so aristocratically unapproachable as to-day in the golden light of morning, the gay flag waving from the roof,—a fluttering sign of welcome floating on the air. Involuntarily the young girl laid her hand upon her throbbing heart; she had not been invited, and yet she had come. It was a sacrifice indeed to sisterly affection, this crushing down of her own proud nature. Behind the bronze tracery of the balcony, the Frau President's lap-dog was running to and fro, barking at the visitor with all his old hostility, and the parrot, in his gilded cage in the blue drawing-room, screamed in chorus.

As Kitty entered the door, a lady glided past her, holding her handkerchief to her face, and above its lace border she glanced shyly at the young girl from eyes swollen and red with weeping. Kitty recognized her; it was the gay young wife of a major, accustomed to every luxury. The elegance and variety of her toilettes had been the talk of the capital. She hurried around the corner of the house towards the shrubbery, probably to remove there the traces of tears before she was seen upon the public highway.

"There is nothing left for her husband but to shoot himself; they say he has lost every stiver," Kitty heard one of the servants say, as she passed through the hall. "Serves him right! What has an army officer to do with speculating in stocks that he knows nothing of? Then his wife comes to our master, and cries her eyes out to beg him to help them out of the mire. A pretty piece of business! If he were to help all those who have been to him lately, he might take up his staff and beg on the road; he would have nothing left for himself."

Another victim, then, of the terrible crisis! Kitty shuddered, and ascended the stairs unperceived. A solemn silence reigned in the third story. Mechanically she opened the door of the room that had formerly been assigned to her. It was plain that the Frau Baroness Steiner reigned here no longer; but the room had evidently not been arranged to receive another guest. Much of the furniture had been removed, and in its stead the walls were lined with draped tables covered with a profusion of articles, displayed with great taste and care,—the gorgeous trousseau of the professor's wife in spe; in the centre of the room, upon a tall dress-stand, hung a robe of snowy satin, covered with lace and orange-blossoms, the heavy train lying long upon the floor,—Flora's wedding-gown. Kitty turned away her eyes, and closed the door; and in a few moments she clasped in her arms Henriette, who, at sight of her sister, broke into such a transport of joy that it seemed the result of relief from terrible pain.

The sick girl was alone. No one had any time to give her to-day, she said. The councillor had taken upon himself all the arrangements for the festival given in honour of Flora's marriage, and everything was to be conducted upon a scale of great magnificence. He was determined to show the capital what money could do. To be sure, this was the weak point in his character. With her usual inconsequence, she had neglected to tell any one of the telegram she had dispatched to Kitty. Such an announcement would have been entirely superfluous, she declared, in reply to Kitty's look of surprise and dismay; every one knew that she had promised to return and nurse her poor Henriette whenever she was sent for, and as for an unexpected encounter with the councillor, Kitty might rest perfectly easy; Moritz had "a new flame" in Berlin, whence he had returned of late, and especially yesterday, remarkably absent-minded; only smiling archly, and making no denial, when Flora had rallied him.

To these communications Kitty made no reply; she was possessed by the conviction that it had been high time for her to return. She found the sick girl much changed, and in a state of feverish agitation. The hard hollow cough shook her emaciated frame much more frequently than formerly, her hands were burning hot, and her breath came with great difficulty. She had hitherto always denied herself the relief of tears; her will was of iron. But to-day her beautiful eyes were swollen and disfigured with weeping. She was consumed by fear, she wailed, hiding her head on Kitty's breast, lest Bruck, with all his love for Flora, should be wretchedly unhappy; and although nothing had been said by the dean's widow about it, she was sure the old lady felt as she did, and was miserable. Kitty admonished her, rather curtly, that this was solely Bruck's affair; no one had had more opportunity than he of being thoroughly aware of Flora's egotistical nature. If he persisted in making her his wife, he was surely prepared to meet the consequences. Henriette started up in alarm; the words sounded so harsh. Indeed, there seemed a strange alteration in Kitty; a kind of stern reserve was in her whole manner, as though she had accepted her fate after a hard struggle.