could suit you better. I
hoped you'd be drawn toward each other by degrees and so regain your
full health. But when you began in such a heels-overhead fashion and
were so suddenly betrothed, I, as an experienced psychologist, couldn't
help shaking my head. Such speedy cures are rarely permanent; they
denote injury to some other organ. But the way in which you speak of
your domestic happiness, reassures me! I don't think I risk anything,
when I say, your old friend, in spite of her countess' coronet, has
made a worse match, than if she had taken the head master, Edwin."

"Unhappy? Poor thing! Does he ill treat her?"

"There!" said Marquard, "after all it will be better for me to keep
what I know to myself. It seems to me you can't yet, with the necessary
objectivity--"

"Don't torture me with delays and evasions!" exclaimed Edwin. "How
could I remain perfectly unmoved, when I heard that a creature once so
dear to me has such a hard fate to endure? But I assure you, even if I
heard it from her own lips, no other thought would enter my mind than
that an unhappy woman was lamenting her sufferings and had claims upon
my brotherly sympathy. The time when she could have bound me with a
hair of her head and forced me to do her will, is gone forever."

"Well then, listen," replied the physician. "Perhaps, as pious people
say, it's a dispensation of Providence, that I've found you here, since
I've been able to do nothing myself.

"A fortnight ago, I received a letter from a Count ----, who invited me
to his castle for a consultation. An address was enclosed, which left
me in no doubt that he was the richest of the counts of the name, and
the lady in question no other than our old friend. You'll understand
that I was curious to see her again. Adeline, who is far too generous
to be jealous, eagerly urged me to go. I had sent most of my patients
to various springs, so I set off at once and reached the place on the
third day.

"The count had sent a carriage to meet me at the station, as it was a
two hour's ride to the castle which was situated in the heart of the
mountains. But the drive didn't seem long; on the way I renewed another
old acquaintance, that of our little Jean, who's grown taller since his
unlucky drinking bout, but is not much more mature. The lad still
stares at the world with the same zealous boyish eyes he had in
Jaegerstrasse. I tried to pump him, but his information never went
beyond the external magnifice