th!"

"Miss Estcourt has told me how admirably you discharge your duties here.
It is wonderful to me. You are an example to us all, and you make me
feel ashamed of my own uselessness."

"Oh, you underrate yourself. People who leave everything to go and help
others cannot talk of being useless. Yes, I look after her house for
her, and I hope to look after her as well."

"After her? Is that one of your duties? Did she stipulate for personal
supervision when she engaged you? How times are changed! When my Karl
was alive, and we lived at Sommershof, I certainly would not have
tolerated that my housekeeper should keep me in order as well as my
house."

"The case was surely different, dear Frau von Treumann. Here is an
unusually pretty young thing, with money. She will need all the
protection I can give her, and it is a satisfaction to me to feel that I
am here and able to give it."

"But she may any day turn round and request you to go."

"That of course may happen, but I hope it will not until she is safe."

"But do you think her so pretty?" put in the baroness wonderingly.

"Safe? What special dangers do you then apprehend for her?" asked Frau
von Treumann with a look of amusement. "Dear princess, you always did
take your duties so seriously. What a treasure you would have been to me
in many ways. It is admirable. But do your duties really include
watching over Miss Estcourt's heart? For I suppose you are thinking of
her heart?"

"I am thinking of adventurers," said the princess. "Any young man with
no money would naturally be delighted to secure this young lady and
Kleinwalde. And those who instead of money have debts, would naturally
be still more delighted." And the princess in her turn gazed pensively
but steadily at Frau von Treumann. "No," she said, taking up her work
again, "I was not thinking of her heart, but of the annoyance she might
be put to. I do not fancy that her heart would easily be touched."

Anna came in at that moment for a paper she wanted, and heard the last
words. "What," she said, smiling, as she unlocked the drawer of her
writing-table and rummaged among the contents, "you are talking about
hearts? You see it is true that women can't be together half an hour
without getting on to subjects like that. If you were three men, now,
you would talk of pigs." Then, a sudden recollection of Uncle Joachim
coming into her mind, she added with conviction, "And pigs are better."

Nor was it till s