, and
learn if there was aught we could do to serve or satisfy him! For in the
old orthodox ghost-stories there is always some reason for these eerie
wanderers returning to the world they have left. But when I turned to
Nora and saw her dear little face still white and drawn, and with an
expression half-subdued, half-startled, that it had never worn before, I
felt thankful that the unbidden visitor had attempted no communication.

"It might have sent her out of her mind," I thought. "Why, if he had
anything to say, did he appear to her, poor child, and not to me?--though,
after all, I am not at all sure that _I_ should not have gone out of my
mind in such a case."

Before long the post-horn made itself heard in the distance; we hurried
down, our hearts beating with the fear of possible disappointment. It
was all right, however, there were _no_ passengers, and nodding adieu to
our old friend, we joyfully mounted into our places, and were bowled
away to Seeberg.

There and at other spots in its pretty neighbourhood we pleasantly
enough spent two or three weeks. Nora by degrees recovered her roses and
her good spirits. Still, her strange experience left its mark on her.
She was never again quite the merry, thoughtless, utterly fearless
child she had been. I tried, however, to take the good with the ill,
remembering that thorough-going childhood cannot last for ever, that
the shock possibly helped to soften and modify a nature that might have
been too daring for perfect womanliness--still more, wanting perhaps in
tenderness and sympathy for the weaknesses and tremors of feebler
temperaments.

At Kronberg, on our return, we found that Herr von Walden was off on a
tour to the Italian lakes, Lutz and young Trachenfels had returned to
their studies at Heidelberg, George Norman had gone home to England. All
the members of our little party were dispersed except Frau von Walden.

To her and to Ottilia I told the story, sitting together one afternoon
over our coffee, when Nora was not with us. It impressed them both.
Ottilia could not resist an "I told you so."

"I knew, I felt," she said, "that something disagreeable would happen to
you there. I never will forget," she went on naively, "the dreary, dismal
impression the place left on me the only time I was there--pouring rain
and universal gloom and discomfort. We had to wait there a few hours to
get one of the horses shod, once when I was driving with my father from
Seeber