ng
with the princess?'

She answered, colouring, 'So long, that I can speak fairish German.'

'And read it easily?'

'I have actually taken to reading, Harry.'

Her courage must have quailed, and she must have been looking for me
on that morning of miserable aspect when I beheld the last of England
through wailful showers, like the scene of a burial. I did not speak of
it, fearing to hurt her pride, but said, 'Have you been here--months?'

'Yes, some months,' she replied.

'Many?'

'Yes,' she said, and dropped her eyelids, and then, with a quick look
at me, 'Wait for Temple, Harry. He is a day behind his time. We can't
account for it.'

I suggested, half in play, that perhaps he had decided, for the sake of
a sea voyage, to come by our old route to Germany on board the barque
Priscilla, with Captain Welsh.

A faint shudder passed over her. She shut her eyes and shook her head.

Our interview satisfied my heart's hunger no further. The Verona's
erratic voyage had cut me off from letters.

Janet might be a widow, for aught I knew. She was always Janet to
me; but why at liberty? why many months at Sarkeld, the guest of the
princess? Was she neither maid nor widow--a wife flown from a brutal
husband? or separated, and forcibly free? Under such conditions Ottilia
would not have commanded my return but what was I to imagine? A boiling
couple of hours divided me from the time for dressing, when, as I
meditated, I could put a chance question or two to the man commissioned
to wait on me, and hear whether the English lady was a Fraulein. The
Margravine and Prince Ernest were absent. Hermann worked in his museum,
displaying his treasures to Colonel Heddon. I sat with the ladies in the
airy look-out tower of the lake-palace, a prey to intense speculations,
which devoured themselves and changed from fire to smoke, while I
recounted the adventures of our ship's voyage, and they behaved as if
there were nothing to tell me in turn, each a sphinx holding the secret
I thirsted for. I should not certainly have thirsted much if Janet had
met me as far half-way as a delicate woman may advance. The mystery lay
in her evident affection, her apparent freedom and unfathomable reserve,
and her desire that I should see Temple before she threw off her
feminine armour, to which, judging by the indications, Ottilia seemed to
me to accede.

My old friend was spied first by his sweetheart Lucy, winding dilatorily
over the hill away fro