Ottilie was throughout so cheerful and quiet that they were able to feel perfectly easy about her; she was seldom absent from the society of her friends:  all that she had desired was that she might be allowed to eat alone, with no one to attend upon her but Nanny.

What habitually befalls any person repeats itself more often than one is apt to suppose, because his own nature gives the immediate occasion for it.  Character, individuality, inclination, tendency, locality, circumstance, and habits, form together a whole, in which every man moves as in an atmosphere, and where only he feels himself at ease in his proper element.

And so we find men, of whose changeableness so many complaints are made, after many years, to our surprise, unchanged, and in all their infinite tendencies, outward and inward, unchangeable.

Thus in the daily life of our friends, almost everything glided on again in its old smooth track.  Ottilie still displayed by many silent attentions her obliging nature, and the others, like her, continued each themselves; and then the domestic circle exhibited an image of their former life, so like it that they might be pardoned if at times they dreamt that it might all be again as it was.

The autumn days, which were of the same length with those old spring days, brought the party back into the house out of the air about the same hour.  The gay fruits and flowers which belonged to the season might have made them fancy it was now the autumn of that first spring, and the interval dropped out and forgotten; for the flowers which now were blooming were the same as those which then they had sown, and the fruits which were now ripening on the trees were those which at that time they had seen in blossom.

The Major went backward and forward, and Mittler came frequently.  The evenings were generally spent in exactly the same way.  Edward usually read aloud, with more life and feeling than before; much better, and even, it may be said, with more cheerfulness.  It appeared as if he was endeavoring, by light-heartedness as much as by devotion, to quicken Ottilie’s torpor into life, and dissolve her silence.  He seated himself in the same position as he used to do, that she might look over his book; he was uneasy and distracted unless she was doing so, unless he was sure that she was following his words with her eyes.

Every trace had vanished of the unpleasant, ungracious feelings of the intervening time.  No one had any secret complaint against another; there were no cross purposes, no bitterness.  The Major accompanied Charlotte’s playing with his violin, and Edward’s flute sounded again, as formerly, in harmony with Ottilie’s piano.  Thus they were now approaching Edward’s birthday, which the year before they had missed celebrating.  This time they were to keep it without any outward festivities, in quiet enjoyment among themselves.  They had so settled it together, half expressly, half from a tacit agreement.