mpletely walled, with its gray houses and
red roofs, showed through the green of its trees and gardens so like a
colored print in a child's story-book that Mrs. March cried out for joy
in it, and then accounted for her rapture by explaining to the stranger
that they were Americans and had never been in Germany before. The lady
was not visibly affected by the fact, she said casually that she had
often been in that little town, which she named; her uncle had a
castle in the country back of it, and she came with her husband for
the shooting in the autumn. By a natural transition she spoke of her
children, for whom she had an English governess; she said she had never
been in England, but had learnt the language from a governess in her own
childhood; and through it all Mrs. March perceived that she was trying
to impress them with her consequence. To humor her pose, she said they
had been looking up the scene of Kaspar Hauser's death at Ansbach; and
at this the stranger launched into such intimate particulars concerning
him, and was so familiar at first hands with the facts of his life,
that Mrs. March let her run on, too much amused with her pretensions to
betray any doubt of her. She wondered if March were enjoying it all as
much, and from time to time she tried to catch his eye, while the lady
talked constantly and rather loudly, helping herself out with words
from them both when her English failed her. In the safety of her perfect
understanding of the case, Mrs. March now submitted farther, and even
suffered some patronage from her, which in another mood she would have
met with a decided snub.

As they drew in among the broad vine-webbed slopes of the Wurzburg,
hills, the stranger said she was going to change there, and take a train
on to Berlin. Mrs. March wondered whether she would be able to keep up
the comedy to the last; and she had to own that she carried it off very
easily when the friends whom she was expecting did not meet her on the
arrival of their train. She refused March's offers of help, and remained
quietly seated while he got out their wraps and bags. She returned with
a hardy smile the cold leave Mrs. March took of her; and when a porter
came to the door, and forced his way by the Marches, to ask with anxious
servility if she, were the Baroness von-----, she bade the man get them.
a 'traeger', and then come back for her. She waved them a complacent
adieu before they mixed with the crowd and lost sight of h