o much as know that I had a
heart.

"'He never wrote to me, never sent me a message. It was only seldom
that I heard from his mother how well he was doing, how industrious he
was, and how much he was praised by his instructors. I used to wonder
that he never came over for a visit. The distance from Carlsruhe was
not so great after all, and however sparing of his time or his money,
he might, I thought, have made the effort if he cared about seeing me
again.

"'But the most wonderful thing of all, and to me wholly
incomprehensible, was that he _did_ once come over, spent a whole long
day with his parents, and seemed to think that there was nothing else
to be seen in the neighbourhood. I never so much as got a distant
glimpse of him, nor did he leave a single message for me. Naturally I
was very much offended, and determined if I ever saw him again to make
him rue it. A year or so later there came an opportunity of doing this.
I was just seventeen years old, he, therefore, was two-and-twenty, when
it was rumoured that he had passed through all the schools with great
honour, and was now looking out for some post or other which he was
sure to get. That he should in the first instance pay a visit to his
parents, stood to reason, but he had not fixed the day and hour. I was,
therefore, not a little startled one afternoon, when sitting with my
sister in the wood behind the old castle and sketching the view,--for
I, too, took drawing-lessons, though I had no particular talent--just
when I was about to pronounce his name and to ask Lina if she knew the
day of his return, I saw a tall, slender, dark young man emerge from
the bushes, take off his hat, and prepare to go down the hill without a
word. I knew him instantly; he had still his old face, only with the
addition of a dark beard, and he was much better-looking. The marks of
the small-pox had almost disappeared. "Good Heavens!" cried I springing
from my seat, "it is you, Hans Lutz! How can you startle one so!" "I
beg your pardon," he said, in a formal polite way, "I had no idea that
I should be disturbing young ladies here; I will no longer intrude upon
them," and therewith he again took off his hat, the abominable man, and
went straight away as if he had only met an old woman picking sticks,
and not the playfellow of his childhood, the paragon of beauty whom
other people took long journeys to admire, and who had such a fine
lecture to read him, too.

"'I do believe I shou