It was in the afternoon. The old baron was napping in the sitting-room. He sat in his large rocking-chair; the newspaper he had been reading had fallen from his feeble, withered hand. He looked very much worsted, like a really old man who had not many years to live, and whose life might be very suddenly ended by a trifling attack. Anna Maria, no doubt, thought so as she sat opposite to him in her accustomed seat, looking at him long and attentively, apparently lost in deep thought. Now she rose and spread a thin handkerchief over the sleeper's face. Then she looked at the clock on the mantel-piece. It was nearly four, the hour at which, according to the unchanging rules of the house, coffee was served--in the garden, if the weather permitted it. The baroness was on the point of rousing her husband, but she reconsidered, went through the open door into the garden, and asked the servant who was carrying the coffee if Baron Felix had been called already?--Not yet, ma'am! Then go up stairs and tell him I beg he will come at once to see me, and--wait! tell mademoiselle she need not come to help to coffee; I'll do it myself; she had better stay in the linen-room.--And, what was it? Oh yes! You need not tell the others yet that coffee is ready!

The man went on his errands. Anna Maria passed the garden-house and entered a long, perfectly shady avenue of beech-trees, which led from the lawn to a copse, in which an old ruined chapel was standing. She seemed to have forgotten entirely that she had sent for Felix, for she went on and on, her eyes fixed upon the ground, till she reached the end of the avenue and the little chapel.

It was a sweet, pleasantly melancholy place. Very old trees of gigantic size overhung it with their broad leafy branches, so that not a ray could pierce. The ground was covered with thick moss; long, luxuriant grass was growing between the broken stones; the crevices in the old walls were all covered with dark-green ivy, and here and there a tall blooming shrub rose from the ruins. Upon the weather-beaten stone cross in the empty window sat a little bird and sang. That was the only sound heard far and near. It seemed only to make the stillness around more deeply felt.

A lover of solitude would have been delighted with the place. But the baroness hardly raised her eyes from the ground to look hastily around. She had at all times little eye for the rays of the sun that came trembling through thick foliage, for dark shadows and other features in a beautiful landscape, and now her mind was preoccupied with very different thoughts. She sat down on a stone bench immediately under the empty window frame in which the little bird was singing, took a letter from her pocket and began to read it once more.

It was the letter which Helen had written that morning, in the belief that her mother's assurance she would never inquire about her correspondence was to be relied on. Fully trusting in the sacredness of letters, she had given it to her maid, with orders to carry it to the kitchen, where the postman was refreshing himself with a cup of coffee. The maid had met the baroness in one of the passages, and the latter had asked her whose letter that was? Upon her answer that her mistress had given it to her, the baroness had taken it with the remark, that she would give it herself to the postman when her own letters were sent down.

Thus Helen's letter had fallen into her mother's hands. It was an accident--one of those accidents which evil spirits seem to bring about, for the very purpose of confusing doubting minds still further, and of leading them more surely away from the right path. Without this accident it would probably never have occurred to the baroness that she might thus find a way to her daughter's heart. But her plan of marrying Helen to Felix had become a fixed idea in her mind, as it happens often with selfish and self-willed characters. The state of her husband's health seemed to her--justly or unjustly--very dangerous; Malte had from his birth been very delicate, and the over-anxious tenderness of his parents had made him still more so; thus it appeared to her more than probable that Felix might ere long be master at Grenwitz, and she thought it therefore wise policy to bind him to her interests as much as she could. At first she had looked in this to Helen's advantage almost as much as to her own, and found it very convenient that her and her daughter's interest could be so pleasantly combined. Felix seemed to be made to become the son-in-law of an imperious mother-in-law. He was trifling, yielding, averse to business, and always disposed to let things go as they chose to go, if he had but money or credit enough. The baroness did not remember that such men are the hardest to manage, because reckless frivolity and intense selfishness can very well go hand in hand, and that these men are ever ready to sacrifice all who oppose their selfish desires. She thought she had nothing to fear from Felix. He had won her whole heart, as far as she had any heart, by his courteous, accommodating manner, and his ever ready: As you like it, dear aunt--do you settle that, please, dear aunt!

All the greater was her concern about Helen. She could not conceal from herself that all her attempts to draw her daughter nearer to herself had so far been fruitless. Of course, she blamed only Helen's "childish disposition" and her "overwrought notions" for the failure, but that did not change the matter itself. And now she had to see, moreover, that Helen had evidently more confidence in her father than in herself, that she was more warmly attached to Bruno than to her brother Malte, and that she treated Oswald, and even Mr. Timm, more courteously than her cousin. Felix had laughed when the baroness told him what she had noticed; he had even said it was a good sign. The ruder the better! was the ex-lieutenant's doctrine, which he accompanied with a gallant comparison between horses and girls strongly smacking of the guard-house. But the baroness had the habit of trusting her own eyes, and her own eyes confirmed daily the correctness of her observation. At last Felix also had begun to feel less sure of success. Emily's words on that night had pierced his self-complacency like a barbed arrow. Jealousy has hawk's eyes. Emily knew that only the love of another could have produced such a change in Oswald, and that wonderful instinct which in women more than replaces the slow logic of men, had in an instant revealed to her that her rival could be no one else but the beautiful Helen. Felix, in his rash manner of trying to get rid of a troublesome thought, had at once communicated the matter to the baroness, and she had meditated on it till she had come to the conclusion that Emily's suggestion was too probable not to be thoroughly investigated.

Just then accident had placed Helen's letter in her hand. This letter, intended only for her daughter's most intimate friend, would probably furnish her the key to her daughter's heart, and confirm or destroy her suspicion. That, this key in her hand became a thief's tool--what did it matter? She must have certainty at any price. And has not a mother the right to know her daughter's secrets? And if this daughter, as she feared, was going astray on a dangerous path, was it not the mother's sacred duty to bring her back by any means in her power?

Thus the baroness had tried to quiet her conscience. Man never is in want of excuses for an act which he has determined to commit at all hazard.

And there she sat now on the stone bench by the old walls of the chapel, with the little bird merrily twittering above, and the letter, the unlucky letter, in her hand. She knew it almost by heart. The fruit from the tree of knowledge, which he had so wickedly stolen, was bitter, very bitter! She had never loved her daughter; now she hated her daughter. It was true then! Her worst suspicions were confirmed. Black ingratitude the only return for all her kindness! Helen on the best terms with the two persons she hated most! Baron Grenwitz's only daughter in love with a hireling, a low-born person, who received wages and his board from her parents! For what meant, after all, those fine phrases about Oswald's goodness of heart, and the sympathy she felt for his secret sorrow? The baroness did not know much of the language of love; but she did know that indifference does not speak thus. It had come to this then! Helen wanted war! Well--war she should have. They would soon see who was the stronger--the mother or the daughter. Could she yield now? Let the disobedient child have her way? Sacrifice her long-cherished plans to a foolish girl's whims? No, and a thousand times, No!

But what was she to do? Try kindness once more, or drop the mask, and command where prayers had been of no avail? And above all, how much of the secret was she to tell Felix? Would his pride be roused if he saw how little Helen thought of him, how she despised him, in fact? Might he not draw back, and would not Helen then triumph after all?

Before the baroness could quite settle this point in her mind, she heard steps near by. She hastily folded up the letter and concealed it in the pocket of her dress.

It was Felix. He had found no one in the garden-house, and accidentally looking down the avenue, he had thought he saw the baroness at the other end.

"Ah! it is you," he said, as the baroness rose when he came near, "I really did not know if it was you. The coffee is waiting, but, like King Philip in the play, lonely and alone. Everybody seems to have slept too long, like myself."

"Sit down here, Felix," said the baroness; "the coffee can wait. We can talk here more at ease than over there."

"A charming secret place for a nice little rendezvous," replied Felix, laughing, and sitting down by the side of the baroness.

At that moment the little bird ceased to sing that had been sitting on the cross in the window, and flew into one of the trees. The pale face of a boy, framed in dark curls, showed itself for a moment in the opening, and looked down, but disappeared instantly at the sight of the two on the stone bench.

"You are still always ready for a joke, dear Felix," said the baroness.

"Still!" replied Felix, "what has happened that I should cry? I suppose you cannot forget what I told you the other night? Pshaw! I have long since recovered from the fright; it was a false alarm, you may believe me."

"I wish I could share your confidence, dear Felix; but I have my good reasons for differing with you on that point. I have observed Helen more carefully since then, and I cannot get rid of the idea that there is something in the suggestion."

"But, pardon me, dear aunt. You have a marvellous talent for seeing everything in dark colors. It was a childish notion of the little Breesen; she wanted to annoy me--voilÀ tout. I cannot imagine that Helen would prefer a schoolmaster to myself. Why, it would be ridiculous, horriblement ridiculous," said the ex-lieutenant, and looked with pleasure at his patent boots.

"And suppose Helen should not forget herself so far--or suppose it should be only a child's caprice, to vanish with the next moment, are you so well pleased with her manner towards yourself?"

"She will change her manner when she finds I am in earnest."

"And if she does not change it?"

"Well, then, we are, heaven be thanked, not married yet," said Felix, lost in admiration of his boot, and hardly knowing what he was saying.

"Then we had better break off our conversation," said the baroness, rising; "if you can speak with such indifference of the failure of a plan which, I think, we both of us look upon with no small interest, it is hardly worth while to discuss it any further."

"But, my dearest aunt," said Felix, starting up and kissing the baroness' hand, "you are really in an awful humor today. How can you be so offended at a word, which did not mean anything at all, 'pon honor? It just slipped out so. You know my tongue often says things for which I should by no means like to be held responsible. Sit down again, pray! You were saying that Helen's manner towards me might not change. My solemn answer is: I shall many her nevertheless. Those things come all right when one sits in the carriage and is off for the wedding tour; at first tears, then sobs, then pouting, then a little smile, and----"

"Enough," said the baroness, "you are an incorrigible wag, who----"

"Succeeds wherever he wants to succeed. And therefore let your scruples go, and give us our coffee or it will be cold."

"Not quite so fast," said the baroness; "what would you advise now?"

"What I have always advised. Since I am not allowed to have anything to do with the matter myself, you had better tell Helen: You marry your cousin Baron Felix Grenwitz, and moreover within so and so many days! That is settled! Selah!"

"Are you in earnest?"

"In full earnest! When are you going to give your great ball?"

"Day after to-morrow."

"Good! that is a capital opportunity to make our engagement public. Just tell Helen: If you are not Felix's betrothed by Thursday evening, you march back to school on Friday morning. You will see that will settle it."

"I am afraid the threat will have the opposite effect. They have spoilt Helen in Hamburg. I believe she had rather go back to-day than Friday."

"Eh bien! Then send the little obstinate damsel to Grunwald, to the model institute of Miss Bear. The little Breesen has been brought up there, and she told me the other day it was rather a kind of penitentiary than a boarding-school; but the harder it is the more effective--I mean the threat. For I will be hanged if ma chÈre cousine lets matters go to such an extremity--pardon me, dear aunt, I know you do not like such strong expressions."

"It is certainly a very bad habit of yours," said the baroness, rising. Felix followed her example.

"Which I shall try to lay aside to please you," he added, offering his arm to the baroness.

"One thing more," said the latter, pausing a moment, "do you believe Grenwitz will consent?"

"If I believe it?" cried Felix, laughing in a manner which was by no means flattering for the poor old gentleman, "if I believe it? Ma foi, chÈre tante, has not my most worthy uncle been nearly twenty years under your orders? How long is it since I have the honor of serving under you? A few weeks, and I think I have learnt to obey pretty well already!"

"You are a flatterer," said the baroness, graciously, "but nobody can be angry with you."

And the worthy pair went off arm in arm.

When the voices could no longer be heard, the boy's face became visible once more in the open window. It was even paler than before. The boy threatened the two with a gesture of his arms, and his lips moved as if they were murmuring a grim malediction. Then, when the two had disappeared out of sight, he let himself down upon the bench where they had been sitting. By the bench on the thick moss lay a badly folded letter, which the baroness had dropped from her pocket. The boy picked it up, and when he saw that it was in Helen's handwriting he pressed it to his lips with passionate tenderness. Then he concealed it carefully in his breastpocket, looked once more cautiously around, and the next moment he had disappeared in the bushes.