that I always act in your interest so far as I understand it."

"My mother knows what you are to us," said Lenore. "She never, indeed,
speaks of you to me, but I can read her glance when she looks at you
across the table. She has always known how to conceal her thoughts; how
she does so more than ever--yes, even to me. I seem to see her pure
image behind a white veil; and she is become so fragile, that often the
tears rush to my eyes merely in looking at her. She always says what is
kind and judicious, but she seems to have lost interest in most things;
and though she smiles at what I say, I fancy that the effort gives her
pain."

"Yes, just so," cried Anton mournfully.

"She only lives to take care of my father. No one, not even her
daughter, knows what she inwardly suffers. She is like an angel,
Wohlfart, who lingers on our earth reluctantly. I can be but little to
her, that I feel. I am not helpful, and want all that makes my mother so
lovely--- the self-control, the calm bearing, the enchanting manner. My
father is sick--my brother thoughtless--my mother, spite of all her
love, reserved toward me. Wohlfart, I am indeed alone."

She leaned on the side of the well and wept.

"Perhaps it will all be for your good," said Anton, soothingly, from the
other side the well. "Yours is an energetic nature, and I believe you
can feel very strongly."

"I can be very angry," chimed in Lenore through her tears, "and then
very careless again."

"You grew up without a care in prosperous circumstances, and your life
was easy as a game."

"My lessons were difficult enough, I am sure," remonstrated Lenore.

"I think that you were in danger of becoming a little wild and haughty
in character."

"I am afraid I was so," cried Lenore.

"Now, you have had to bear heavy trials, and the present looks serious
too; and if I may venture to say so, dear lady, I think you will find
here just what the baroness has acquired in the great world--dignity and
self-control. I often think that you are changed already."

"Was I, then, an unbearable little savage formerly?" asked Lenore,
laughing in the midst of her tears, and looking at Anton with girlish
archness.

He had hard work not to tell her how lovely she was at that moment; but
he valiantly conquered the inclination, and said, as coolly as he could,
"Not so bad as that, dear lady."

"And do you know what you are?" asked Lenore, playfully. "You are, as
Eugene writes, a little sch