g to Marsfeldt."

Frau von Walden and I could not help smiling at her. Still there was no
smiling at my story, though both agreed that, viewed in the light of
unexaggerated common sense, it was most improbable that there was any
tragedy mixed up with the disappearance of the young man we had heard of
at Gruenstein.

"And indeed why we should speak of his 'disappearance' I don't know,"
said Frau von Walden. "He did not write to send the order he had spoken
of--that was all. No doubt he is very happy at his own home. When you
are back in England, my dear, you must try to find him out--perhaps by
means of the cup. And then when Nora sees him, and finds he is not at
all like the 'ghost,' it will make her the more ready to think it was
really only some _very strange_, I must admit, kind of optical delusion."

"But Nora has never heard the Gruenstein story, and is not to hear it,"
said Ottilia.

"And England is a wide place, small as it is in one sense," I said.
"Still, if I _did_ come across the young man, I half think I would tell
Nora the whole, and by showing her how _my_ imagination had dressed it
up, I think I could perhaps lessen the effect on her of what she thought
she saw. It would prove to her better than anything, the tricks that
fancy may play us.

"And in the meantime, if you take my advice, you will allude to it as
little as possible," said practical Ottilia. "Don't _seem_ to avoid the
subject, but manage to do so in reality."

"Shall you order the tea-service?" asked Frau von Walden.

"I hardly think so. I am out of conceit of it somehow," I said. "And it
might remind Nora of the blue paper parcel. I think I shall give the cup
and saucer to my sister."

And on my return to England I did so.

* * * * *

Two years later. A very different scene from quaint old Kronberg, or
still more from the dreary "Katze" at Silberbach. We are in England
now, though not at our own home. We are staying, my children and I--two
older girls than little Nora, and Nora herself, though hardly now to
be described as "little"--with my sister. Reggie is there too, but
naturally not much heard of, for it is the summer holidays, and
the weather is delightful. It is August again--a typical August
afternoon--though a trifle too hot perhaps for some people.

"This time two years ago, mamma," said Margaret, my eldest daughter,
"you were in Germany with Nora and Reggie. What a long summer that
seemed