flights to St. Leonards, Hastings, Leamington, the mad rides across country through frosted trees behind the hounds in full cry; in summer during the season there were parties, balls, the opera, the park; then in the holidays splendid travels with papa and mamma, once to Belgium, France, and the Rhine, another time to Switzerland and Italy, then to Heligoland and Norway.  No, she could never have such good times again.  In the following year she went back to Berlin, and had spent a very agreeable winter, a subscription ball, several other balls, innumerable soirees, a box at the opera, lovely acquaintances, with naturally many successes—­ the envy of false friends, but she did not allow herself to be much disturbed by them.

Wilhelm listened to this chatter with mixed feelings.  If she seemed superficial, he reconciled himself by a glance at her beautiful silken hair, at her laughing brown eyes, at her roguish dimples, and instantly he pleaded with his cooler reason for pardon for the lovely girl—­he for nineteen years had had other things beside pleasure to think of!  These charms seemed enough to work the taming magic of Orpheus over the wild animals of the woods.

“And you were never,” he asked timidly as she paused, “a little bit in love?”

“I can look after myself,” she answered, with a silvery laugh, and Wilhelm felt as if an iron band had been lifted from his heart, like the trusty Henry’s in the story.

“That points to marvelous wisdom in a child of society—­seeing so many people—­so attractive!  You are indifferent then to admiration?”

“I did not say that.  My fancy has been often enough touched, but—­”

“But your heart has not?”

“No.”

“Really not?” continued he, in a tone of voice in which, he himself detected the anxiety.

She shook her head, and looked down thoughtfully.  But after a short pause she raised her rosy face and said, “No—­better die than speak untruths—­I was rather in love with our pastor who confirmed me.  He was thin and pale with long hair, much longer than yours.  And he spoke very beautifully and powerfully—­I felt sentimental when I thought of him.  But I soon got to know his wife, who was as pointed and hard as a knitting needle, and his children, whose number I never could count exactly, and my youthful feelings received a severe chill.”  She laughed, and Wilhelm joined her heartily.

It was now his turn to relate his story.  He was as to his birthplace hardly a German, but a Russian, as he first saw the light in Moscow, in the year 1845.

“So you are now twenty-four?”

“Last May.  Are you frightened at such an age, fraulein?”

“That is not so old, twenty-four—­particularly for a man,” she protested with great earnestness.