od in the snow could not be brighter.'

The margravine repeated,

'A track of blood in the snow! My good young man, you have excited forms
of speech.'

I shuddered. Ottilia divined that her burning blush had involved me.
Divination is fiery in the season of blushes, and I, too, fell on the
track of her fair spirit, setting out from the transparent betrayal by
Schwartz of my night-watch in the pine-wood near the Traun river-falls.
My feelings were as if a wave had rolled me helpless to land, at the
margravine's mercy should she put another question. She startled us with
a loud outburst of laughter.

'No! no man upon this earth but Roy could have sat that horse I don't
know how many minutes by the clock, as a figure of bronze,' she
exclaimed.

Ottilia and I exchanged a grave look. The gentleness of the old time was
sweet to us both: but we had the wish that my father's extravagant
prominency in it might be forgotten.

At the dinner-table I made the acquaintance of the Herr Professor Dr.
Julius von Karsteg, tutor to the princess, a grey, broad-headed man,
whose chin remained imbedded in his neck-cloth when his eyelids were
raised on a speaker. The first impression of him was, that he was chiefly
neck-cloth, coat-collar, grand head, and gruffness. He had not joined the
ceremonial step from the reception to the dining saloon, but had shuffled
in from a side-door. No one paid him any deference save the princess. The
margravine had the habit of thrumming the table thrice as soon as she
heard his voice: nor was I displeased by such an exhibition of
impatience, considering that he spoke merely for the purpose of snubbing
me. His powers were placed in evidence by her not daring to utter a
sarcasm, which was possibly the main cause of her burning fretfulness.

I believe there was not a word uttered by me throughout the dinner that
escaped him. Nevertheless, he did his business of catching and worrying
my poor unwary sentences too neatly for me, an admirer of real force and
aptitude, to feel vindictive. I behaved to him like a gentleman, as we
phrase it, and obtained once an encouraging nod from the margravine. She
leaned to me to say, that they were accustomed to think themselves lucky
if no learned talk came on between the Professor and his pupil. The truth
was, that his residence in Sarkeld was an honour to the prince, and his
acceptance of the tutorship a signal condescension, accounted for by his
appreciation of the pr