It is Jeanne's turn to change color. From temple to throat blushes mantle over the child's pale skin; her eyes sink beneath Wolfgang's questioning gaze.

The master has compassion enough to look away from her. 'She loves me a little-not " (picking up a flower that has fallen from Jeanne's hand and shredding it, petal from petal)—" she loves me-not!" He flings down the stalk with a certain gesture of impatience.

"What better answer could be expected from such an oracle! Do you know, Miss Dempster, that the sun is down-that, unless I wish you good-by this very instant, I shall lose my train?'

"

"Lose it, sir," says little Jeanne promptly. "I invite you, in Mamselle Ange's name, to drink tea with us. Give up dust and heat and enginesmoke for once, and walk to Freiburg, as everybody used to do before the railroad was made across the mountains."

"The invitation is tempting, Fraulein Jeanne. On an evening like this the very sight of an engine among our Black Forest valleys is an abomination. Still, I have my evening class in Freiburg, my good, studious lads to whom work means work-"

And Euclid, Euclid. Let the good, studious lads have a holiday, poor wretches! They will be none the duller to-morrow, depend upon it."

"The philosophy is pleasant if not sound. 'Fais ce que tu aimes, advienne que pourra.' As I certainly love this garden better than my hot town lodging," says Wolfgang, "I will risk putting it into practice."

He pauses, transfers his pipe-the eternal meerschaum-from his lips to his breast-pocket, and with an air half of enjoyment, half of regret, looks around him.

"Paul von Egmont need not have wandered far a-field in search of inspiration," he remarks presently. "Had the lad contented himself with painting pictures of homely Schwarzwald lives, of homely Schwarzwald landscapes, his work, at least, might have boasted originality. In Rome, like so many of our German students, he has become but a pale copyist of greater artists' thoughts. But that is how men miss their true vocation— their true happiness also-nineteen times out of twenty."

"Count Paul has missed happiness," says Jeanne, "if the village gossips say true. You know his story?"

"Not so well but that it might be good for me to hear you repeat it, little Jeanne." The familiar epithet seems to escape, unawares, from Wolfgang's lips. "I know one version of the

"Well, sir, before Count Paul was one-andtwenty, he had the misfortune to fall in love. His sweetheart was a village girl who had sat to him as a model-Wendolin the miller's daughter Malva."

Jeanne raises her eyes to the master's face; but Wolfgang has turned sharply away; his arms are folded across his breast. "She was the handsomest maiden of the Höllenthal. You may see her portrait, any day you choose, just as Count Paul painted her, in the altar-piece of St. Ulrich Church. Some think," says little Jeanne, "that all her troubles sprang from that picture. No maiden prospers in earthly love, you know, who has given her face as a model for the Holy Mother's. But these things are too deep for me. Yes, she was the handsomest maiden of the Höllenthal, and the best-to this day, tears come in the village people's eyes when they speak of Wendolin's Malva-and young Count Paul was to marry her at Easter. All the Von Egmonts at the Schloss here were beside themselves with mortification. Such a crime as a Von Egmont marrying a peasant maiden was not written, Ange says, in the records of their house. Count Paul had already determined to be a painter (that, in itself, was blow enough to the family pride), and was to go to Rome for the winter to study. If Malva had willed, he would have taken her with him as his bride; but the maiden had self-respect enough to say no. 'I will win the heart of the Countess and of her daughter yet,' said Wendolin's Malva. 'Every good woman is pitiful. When the gracious ladies see me alone, without Count Paul, when they see how I shall work, and learn and fit myself to be his wife, they will soften toward me.'

"But the gracious ladies," goes on little Jeanne, "never softened. When young Count Paul had been gone about three months, they came one day, in their velvets and furs, to Wendolin's house, bringing with them a letter—a letter, so they said, that had just arrived from a brother artist of Paul's in Rome, and that it much behooved Malva to listen to. That letter was the maiden's death-blow."

Wolfgang rises hastily. He crosses to the farther side of the terrace and stands there, his back turned toward the western after-glow, his face veiled in shadow. Overhead the swifts are circling, with happy cries, athwart the sun-colored heaven. A solitary thrush calls low from the Wald. The garden, gay with such hardy flowers as can stand the Black Forest climate, is at the zenith of its summer bravery. A spirit of freshness, purity, peace, seems moving, like a visible presence, over the fair and fragrant earth.

"Finish the maiden's story,” says the master, after a time. "It has an interest for me beyond what you can understand. Tell me as much as

you know of-of Malva's death."

"I know more of her death than of her life," says little Jeanne. "Old Fritzel's granddaughter, blind Lottchen, used to tell me about it. To all who were sad or stricken, Wendolin's Malva was good; and often she would have the blind girl hold her company for days together, and talk to her, when the two were alone, of her love and

of her sorrow. 'Count Paul is going to be a great painter'-this ran through all her thoughts -and he will choose for himself a noble wife. It were sin and shame, his brother painters say, that he should marry a peasant maiden because of her yellow hair and white throat. I should drag him down to my level; I should stand between him and his art; I should make him unhappy with mean jealousies-I, who would die to please his least wish and think death sweet!' And then she would weep-at times, blind Lottchen could hear her weeping quietly the whole night long or she would rise, when she thought the rest of the house slept, and pray for Count Paul and for strength to be true to him."

"True!" repeats Wolfgang, very low. "Have I not heard that she wrote Von Egmont a letter taking back her plighted troth, declaring that it was better that both should marry in their own class of life?”

"That letter was written under the Gräfin's direction. She was Paul's step-mother, you know, sir; no real mother would so have risked her son's happiness. And Paul-there, say the peasant people, was his sin-he took the simple maiden at her word. Ange and the Fräu Meyer have heard there were other influences that helped against poor Malva. Some say there was a great English lady in Rome, whose flattery drew the young painter into her train of admirers; and some say there was an Italian play-actress, and some say there were both. About all this I know nothing. Malva died. Her picture hangs, where you may see it, over St. Ulrich high altar, and her grave is in the Kirchhof beside the big yew. The carved marble cross at her head was placed there by Count Paul's order. It came from Munich, and cost more gold than Malva had touched in all her life. But he never troubled himself to visit the spot; he never shed a tear over her grave. Blind Lottchen kept it fresh with flowers while she lived, and, now that Lottchen lies there too, I have planted pinks and rosemary above them both. I will go to the Kirchhof with you any evening you choose, sir."

"I have been there already," answers Wolfgang shortly, 'When I came back to the Wald

SILENCE profound, yet fraught with inarticulate murmurs, just as the air is haunted by impalpable odors from the adjacent forest; sweet, dewy silence, such as a city-wearied man might well travel a few hundred miles, now, in this July weather, to enjoy.

Schloss Egmont lies in one of the remoter valleys of the Höllenthal—a district curtly hinted at by guide-books, uninvaded by the great devastating army of personally-conducted cockney sight-mongers. Less than two years ago the older people of St. Ulrich village had never heard a railway-whistle. No telegraphic wires link its interests with those of the outer world. The church-clock, set approximately right on Sunday mornings, possesses an hour-hand only. Do not the storks go and come? Are there not the season of resin-gathering, the season of timberfloating, the rising and setting of God's sun, throughout all the changes of the year? What need men here with such finikin apportionments of time as quarters or minutes?

The deep discordance of a far-away supperbell rouses Jeanne and her master from the reverie into which both have sunk. For fifteen years or more that bell has rested in idleness: no need to summon Mamselle Ange, the housekeeper, and Jeanne, the solitary occupants of the Schloss, to their homely meals. During the past ten days, however, the prospect of Count Paul's return has roused the household into a sort of galvanized life. Dinner-bells, calling no one to dinner, are rung; shutters are opened of a morning and closed at night; Hans the gardener is learning, in a twenty-year-old livery, to wait at table; a flag, moldily displaying the Von Egmont quarterings, floats, as was its wont in palmier times, from the topmost pepper-pot turret of the house.

As Jeanne and Wolfgang draw near, Mamselle Ange appears suddenly at the central basement doorway-a lamp in one hand, an open letter in the other. No man has ever definitely made out if Ange be maid, wife, or widow. It is the custom throughout the Fatherland to call

housekeepers "mamselle," irrespective of age, nation, or social status; and Ange, for more than thirty years, has reigned supreme over the still-room and kitchens of Schloss Egmont. A Scotchwoman by descent, Angela Macgregor's youth was spent in Spain, from which country she accompanied the Countess Dolores von Egmont to the Schwarzwald. From that day to this she has never left the grand duchy of Baden. "I dislike the country, the climate, and the language," Mamselle Ange will tell you in moments of expansion; "but I stay here for the sake of Paul and Salome. Dolores made me promise to be true to the children. I have kept my word—yes, even when their father brought home another wife. One may be allowed to do one's duty, I suppose, without liking it?"

"The children" have long passed away out of Ange's sight. Salome, brilliantly married in her teens, is mistress of a London embassy. Paul, self-exiled at the age of twenty, divides his homeless Bohemian life between the different art capitals of Europe. But Ange remains at her post. "When the boy marries," she declares with a sigh, “I will take little Jeanne by the hand and make my way to Inverness. Paul will return with his bride to Egmont some day, and I shall go back to my father's house, among my father's people, to die."

At the present moment excitement, unwonted, heightens our good Mamselle Ange's complexion. Her cap, at no time secure as to its foundations, is suspended over her left ear; the points of her pelerine hang jauntily from the opposite shoulder.

'Tis evident the arrival of the letter-carrier has broken in upon some mysterious chemistry of the still-room. A huge checked apron envelops Ange's person from chin to ankle; the skirt of her dress is pinned up in the style called "fishwife" by the fashion-books; a pungent odor of raspberries and vinegar breaks on the sense at her approach.

“Here is a fine prospect before us all!" she exclaims, or rather soliloquizes, as Jeanne and the master draw near. Salome obliged to start for St. Petersburg on political affairs-something new for our princess to be so dutiful in accompanying her husband! Paul, no one knows where, in Germany, and a parcel of fashionable fools coming to Schloss Egmont next Thursday! Yes, fashionable fools!" ejaculates Ange, in fiery staccato. "The celebrated London beautyVivian Vivash. What do we want with celebrated beauties in the Black Forest? And her friend-a lady of title-and her other friend, a baronet-and a maid! To be entertained by me! 'Trespassers' (easy enough for Salome to write in that airy style) upon our good Mamselle Ange's hospitality.' Very great trespassers, in

deed! A beauty, and her friends, and her maid, just in the season of the small fruits! Mr. Wolfgang" (awakening to the master's presence with a jump, our good Mamselle being at once short-sighted and absent, her existence is passed in a chronic condition of surprise), “I believed you to have started for Freiburg an hour ago. May I ask you to hold the inkstand upright—I mean to the left ?—the ink leaks when it is held straight. If you will wait a minute, Mr. Wolfgang, I shall give you something to carry home with you. My last two bottles of raspberry vinegar have not turned out as clear as I could wish."

"

'Mr. Wolfgang will drink tea with us tonight," interrupts little Jeanne. "The lesson was so long-I had so many faults in my exercise

that Mr. Wolfgang lost his train, and-" "And will have the pleasure of walking home by starlight, Mamselle Ange's present of raspberry vinegar in his pocket," remarks Wolfgang, with composure.

"It is not over-clear, Mr. Wolfgang-not to compare with my company vinegar-but it will make you a nice, wholesome drink during the hot weeks. And where means are small," says Ange, with a compassionate shake of the head, "of course, every little is a help."

Jeanne glances in an agony at Wolfgang; but the point-blank mention of his poverty has evidently not disconcerted him. A diverted smile lights his face: as he follows Mamselle Ange up the winding stair which leads from the basement to the parterre floor, he sings, half aloud, the first bars of "The Wanderer":

"Tired and worn, as the sun goes down,
The Wanderer enters his native town,
And see! His old friends pass him by ;
So bronzed his cheek . . . .”

"I do not, generally, admit strangers to this room," cries Mamselle Ange, pushing back an oaken door on the left side of the landing. "However, for once-Jeanne, my dear," with meaning—“ for once, we shall be glad to bid Mr. Wolfgang welcome, and to give him a slice of currant cake, a cup of English tea, such, I am sure, as he does not often taste.-Come in, Mr. Wolfgang") accompanying the invitation by a ceremonious courtesy). "This used to be Count Paul's study; you see his portrait there, above the bookcase, as he was at fourteen; and Jeanne and I make it our summer parlor. One might call it a comfortable room, if it were possible ever to be comfortable out of Great Britain. Two lone women seem less stranded, at all events less like sand on the seashore, here than elsewhere, in Schloss Egmont."

It is a room well loved by little Jeanne; the more, perhaps, in that she has no British expe

riences whereon to found her ideas of comfort. A wainscoted hexagonal room situate in the western tower of the Schloss, pine-woods in front, pine-woods on either side; a vista of blue moorland showing through a clearing among the forests, at one solitary point. As a child, Jeanne used to be told that blue streak was the sea. When Fräulein Jeanne was old enough, said the waiting-maidens, she should sail away thither, like the wood-merchants floating down, upon their rafts, to the country of the Mynheers, and meet her father and mother, provided she worked diligently at her sampler and sums meanwhile.

Jeanne Dempster arrived at the truth of the legend a good many years ago. She knows that the blue streak is the Rhine plain; knows that her father and mother have crossed a sea the navigation of whose currents not the most assiduous sampler-working-no, not even a mastery of the rule of three-can facilitate. With wiser people than Jeanne, however, the magic of a belief is apt to linger longer than the belief itself. The blue streak is but the Rhine plain! And still, at seventeen as at seven, it remains a heaven-kissed horizon to the girl's hopes-a farstretching background to a thousand sweet and unsubstantial dreams.

The twilight by this time has died out; external objects are no longer discernible; yet can one feel the presence of the woods by the indistinct soughing sound, the piney aroma that enters through the open windows. Unpinning her apron, and setting her cap approximately straight before the one small mirror of which the study can boast, Mamselle Ange takes her seat at the table, where a lamp and tea-equipage are set ready. The master places himself in such a position as exactly to confront the picture of Count Paul von Egmont.

It is an oil-painting, life-size, by Werner. The boy, in point-lace and velvet, seems to look out with earnest, living eyes from the canvas; a side-light falls softly, yet with Rembrandt-like intensity of effect, upon the fair young face.

"You are looking at a masterpiece, sir," says Ange, as Wolfgang stirs his tea somewhat absently. "It is said, from an art point of view, to be the best portrait Werner ever painted, let alone the beauty of the subject. People used to talk of Salome's good looks. An aristocratic profile,' said these German Hochwohlgeborens. 'An alabaster brow-a complexion!' Salome was not to be spoken of in the same day as the boy. Paul's heart was aristocratic, in the best sense of the word, and his heart was written on his countenance. Ah me!" muses Ange, "I should recognize his smile among a thousand. Salome, for aught I know, may be just a prettyish, faded woman, a doll that has lost its paint

the usual ending of a profile and a complexion. A face like Paul's must grow nobler under the influence of years."

"Take away the millinery, the velvet, the point-lace, the Rembrandt effect," remarks Wolfgang coolly, "and one would call Paul von Egmont an ordinary-looking boy."

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Ordinary!" exclaims little Jeanne, Mamselle Ange chiming in an indignant second. "You can look at that forehead, at those lips, sir, and call them ordinary? Count Paul's face is just the most beautiful thing in the world," says Jeanne, with warmth. It is not the child's wont to be demonstrative; but Wolfgang's disparaging tone, a certain contempt with which he looks up at Paul von Egmont's portrait, have stung her out of her accustomed reticence. "Whenever we leave Schloss Egmont—yes, mamselle, whenever you and I start off for Inverness-we will carry that portrait away with us. I could not live without it.”

The master turns; he looks at his pupil with cool scrutiny. (How sharp is the contrast-the thought flashes through Jeanne Dempster's mind

how sharp the contrast between the lad with his affluence of spirits, of hope, and the man, "not clean past his youth, yet with some smack of age in him, some relish of the saltness of time," and with disappointment, satiety, regret, printed, deeper even than his years should warrant, on his face !)

"

"I should presume too far did I ask the reason of Fräulein Dempster's enthusiasm," he remarks, after a pause. 'As art, the portrait, like all that Werner paints, has its merits. Beyond that-"

"Oh, you must never talk about Jeanne's reasons," interrupts Mamselle Ange. "Little Jeanne likes and dislikes, as she does most things, by instinct. From the time she could notice anything she took to worshiping Paul's picture-I believe, until I taught her better, used to say her prayers to it."

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Well for the child," answers Wolfgang, in a tone that brings the blood to Jeanne's cheek"well for the child, Mamselle Ange, that she used to say her prayers to anything!"

There is a flavor of heterodoxy about the remark that is little to Mamselle Ange's taste. She is an out-and-out conservative, a stickler for every inch of social grade or barrier, and has no idea of a person in poor Mr. Wolfgang's class uttering anything beyond the blankest copy-book truisms. A man must be a "de" or a von " who should venture, unrebuked, in Ange's presence, upon such a solecism as freethinking.

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