But Arthur was eager, and persistent, and patient, and had never respected his brother one half as much as when he was stammering over the German pronunciation, which he could not well master.  But he learned to read with a tolerable degree of fluency, and to speak a little, too, while he could understand nearly all Arthur said to him.

‘Do you think I could get along in Germany?’ he asked his brother, one day.

‘Certainly you could,’ Arthur replied.  Do you think of going there?  If you do, go to Wiesbaden, and inquire for Gretchen—­how she died, and where she was buried.  I should have gone long ago only I dreaded the ocean voyage so confoundedly, and then I forget so badly.  When are you going?’

‘Oh, I don’t know—­I don’t know as ever,’ Frank answered quickly; and yet in his heart there was the firm resolve to go to Wiesbaden and hunt up Marguerite Heinrich’s friends, if possible.

’And if I find them, and find my suspicions correct, what shall I do then?’ he asked himself over and over again; and once made answer to his question:  ’I will either make restitution, or drown myself in the Rhine.’

Jerrie was a constant source of misery to Frank, and yet when she was at home he was always managing to have her at the park house, where he could see her, and watch her, as she moved like a young queen though the handsome rooms, or frolicked with Maude upon the lawn.

‘She is surely Gretchen’s daughter, and Arthur’s, too,’ he would say to himself, as he, too, detected in her face the likeness to his brother, which had so startled Jerrie in the mirror.

He was always exceedingly kind to her, and almost as proud of her success at Vassar as Arthur himself; and on the day when she was expected home he went two or three times to the cottage in the lane, carrying fruit and flowers, and even offering things more substantial, which, however, were promptly declined by Mrs. Crawford, who had signified her intention to take nothing more for Jerrie’s board.

‘The girl pays for herself, or will,’ she said, ’and it is Harold’s wish and mine to be independent.’

But she accepted the fruit and the flowers and wondered a little to see Frank so excited, and nervous, and anxious that every thing should be done to make Jerrie’s final home-coming as pleasant as possible.

It was a lovely July afternoon when the young ladies from Vassar were expected, but the train was half an hour late, and the carriage from Grassy Spring and the carriage from Le Bateau had waited so long that both coachmen were asleep upon their respective boxes, when at last the whistle was heard among the hills telling that the cars were coming.  The Tracy carriage was not there, though twenty minutes before train time Maude had come down in the victoria, and on learning of the delay had been driven rapidly to the cottage in the lane, from which she had not returned when at last the cars stopped before the station and the young people alighted upon the platform, which, with their luggage, seemed at once to be full.