lovely; but the impression added something to that sense of the
enlargement of opportunity which had been born of her arrival in the New
World.

One day--it was late in the afternoon--Acton pulled up his horses on the
crest of a hill which commanded a beautiful prospect. He let them
stand a long time to rest, while he sat there and talked with Madame
M; auunster. The prospect was beautiful in spite of there being nothing
human within sight. There was a wilderness of woods, and the gleam of a
distant river, and a glimpse of half the hill-tops in Massachusetts.
The road had a wide, grassy margin, on the further side of which there
flowed a deep, clear brook; there were wild flowers in the grass, and
beside the brook lay the trunk of a fallen tree. Acton waited a while;
at last a rustic wayfarer came trudging along the road. Acton asked him
to hold the horses--a service he consented to render, as a friendly turn
to a fellow-citizen. Then he invited the Baroness to descend, and the
two wandered away, across the grass, and sat down on the log beside the
brook.

"I imagine it does n't remind you of Silberstadt," said Acton. It was
the first time that he had mentioned Silberstadt to her, for particular
reasons. He knew she had a husband there, and this was disagreeable to
him; and, furthermore, it had been repeated to him that this husband
wished to put her away--a state of affairs to which even indirect
reference was to be deprecated. It was true, nevertheless, that the
Baroness herself had often alluded to Silberstadt; and Acton had often
wondered why her husband wished to get rid of her. It was a curious
position for a lady--this being known as a repudiated wife; and it is
worthy of observation that the Baroness carried it off with exceeding
grace and dignity. She had made it felt, from the first, that there were
two sides to the question, and that her own side, when she should choose
to present it, would be replete with touching interest.

"It does not remind me of the town, of course," she said, "of the
sculptured gables and the Gothic churches, of the wonderful Schloss,
with its moat and its clustering towers. But it has a little look of
some other parts of the principality. One might fancy one's self among
those grand old German forests, those legendary mountains; the sort of
country one sees from the windows at Shreckenstein."

"What is Shreckenstein?" asked Acton.

"It is a great castle,--the summer residence of