t, at
Lahnburg, a four-hours' railway journey from Elberthal.

Frau Mittendorf, who had been at Elberthal on a visit, was to take
Stella and me with her to Lahnburg on the Tuesday morning after our
arrival, which was on Friday evening.

The good doctor's schloss, an erection built like the contrivances of
the White Knight in "Through the Looking-glass," on "a plan of his own
invention," had been his pet hobby for years, and now that it was
finished, he invited every invitable person to come and stay at it.

It was not likely that he would excuse a person for whom he had so much
regard as he professed for me from the honor, and I was fain to conceal
the fact that I would much rather have remained in Elberthal, and make
up my mind to endure as well as I could the prospect of being buried in
the country with Frau Mittendorf and her children.

* * * * *

It was Sunday afternoon. An equinoctial gale was raging, or rather had
been raging all day. It had rained incessantly, and the wind had howled.
The skies were cloud-laden, the wind was furious. The Rhine was so
swollen that the streets in the lower part of the town sloping to the
river were under water, and the people going about in boats.

But I was tired of the house; the heated rooms stifled me. I was weary
of Frau Mittendorf's society, and thoroughly dissatisfied with my own.

About five in the afternoon I went to the window and looked out. I
perceived a strip of pale, watery blue through a rift in the storm-laden
clouds, and I chose to see that, and that only, ignoring the wind-lashed
trees of the allee; the leaves, wet, and sodden and sere, hurrying
panic-stricken before the gale, ignoring, too, the low wail promising a
coming hurricane, which sighed and soughed beneath the wind's shrill
scream.

There was a temporary calm, and I bethought myself that I would go to
church--not to the Protestant church attended by the English
clique--heaven forbid! but to my favorite haunt, the Jesuiten Kirche.

It was just the hour at which the service would be going on. I asked
Stella in a low voice if she would not like to come; she declined with a
look of pity at me, so, notifying my intention to Frau Mittendorf, and
mildly but firmly leaving the room before she could utter any
remonstrance, I rushed upstairs, clothed myself in my winter mantle,
threw a shawl over my arm, and set out.

The air was raw, but fresh, life-giving and invigoratin