e was here this morning.'

'Ah! we owe her more than we were aware of.'

The princess looked on her kindly, though with suspense in the
expression.

'She told me of my approaching visitor,' I said.

'Oh! not told!' Lieschen burst out.

'Did you,'--the princess questioned her, and murmured to me, 'These
children cannot speak falsehoods,' they shone miserably under the burden
of uprightness 'did you make sure that I should come?'

Lieschen thought--she supposed. But why? Why did she think and suppose?
What made her anticipate the princess's arrival? This inveterate why
communicated its terrors to Aennchen, upon whom the princess turned
scrutinizing eyes, saying, 'You write of me to your sister?'

'Yes, princess.'

'And she to you?'

Lieschen answered: 'Forgive me, your Highness, dearest lady!'

'You offered yourself here unasked?'

'Yes, princess.'

'Have you written to others besides your sister?'

'Seldom, princess; I do not remember.'

'You know the obligation of signatures to letters?'

'Ah!'

'You have been remiss in not writing to me, child.'

'Oh, princess! I did not dare to.'

'You have not written to me?'

'Ah! princess, how dared I?'

'Are you speaking truthfully?'

The unhappy girls stood trembling. Ottilia spared them the leap into the
gulfs of confession. Her intuitive glance, assisted by a combination of
minor facts, had read the story of their misdeeds in a minute. She sent
them down to the carriage, suffering her culprits to kiss her fingers;
while she said to one: 'This might be a fable of a pair of mice.'

When she was gone, after many fits of musing, the signification of it
was revealed to my slower brain. I felt that it could not but be an
additional shock to the regal pride of such a woman that these little
maidens should have been permitted to act forcibly on her destiny.
The mystery of the letters was easily explained as soon as a direct
suspicion fell on one of the girls who lived in my neighbourhood and the
other who was near the princess's person. Doubtless the revelation of
their effective mouse plot had its humiliating bitterness for her on
a day of heavy oppression, smile at it as she subsequently might. The
torture of heart with which I twisted the meaning of her words about the
pair of mice to imply that the pair had conspired to make a net for an
eagle and had enmeshed her, may have struck a vein of the truth. I could
see no other antithesis to the laudable perf