looking straight before him, his mouth a mere grim line,
thinking how grievous it was that the consequences of sin should fall
with their most terrific weight nearly always on the innocent, on the
helpless women-folk and the weak little children, when Anna and Letty
appeared, talking and laughing, on the edge of the forest.

Letty, we know, had not been kindly treated by nature, but even she was
a pleasing object in her harmless morning cheerfulness after the faces
he had just seen; and Anna's beauty, made radiant by happiness and
contentment, startled him. He had a momentary twinge, gone almost before
he had realised it, a sudden clear conception of his great loneliness.
The satisfaction he strove to extract from improving his estate for the
benefit of his brother Gustav appeared to him at that moment to bear a
singular resemblance, in its thinness, to Frau Dellwig's charitable
soup. He got off his horse to speak to her, and rested his eyes, tired
by looking at the hideous passions on the brawler's face, on hers.
"To-day is the important day, is it not?" he asked, glancing from her
flower-like face to the flowers.

"The first three come this afternoon."

"So Manske told me. You are very happy, I can see," he said, smiling.

"I never was so happy before."

"Your uncle was a wise man. He told me he was going to leave you
Kleinwalde because he felt sure you would be happy leading the simple
life here."

"Did he talk about me to you?"

"After his last visit to England he talked about you all the time."

"Oh?" said Anna, looking at him thoughtfully. Uncle Joachim, she
remembered perfectly, had urged two things--the leading of the better
life, and the marrying of a good German gentleman. A faint flush came
into her face and faded again. She had suddenly become aware that Axel
was the good German gentleman he had meant. Well, the wisest uncle was
subject to errors of judgment.

"I trust those women will not worry you too much," he said, thinking how
immense would be the pity if those happy eyes ever lost their
joyousness.

"Worry me? Poor things, they won't have any energy of any sort left
after all they have gone through. I never read such pitiful letters."

"Well, I don't know," said Axel doubtfully. "Manske says one of them is
a Treumann. It is a family distinguished by its size and its
disagreeableness."

"Oh, but she only married a Treumann, and isn't one herself."

"But a woman generally adopts the pecu