ave you any proposals to make?'

"'Yes,' she said, firmly; and after a pause continued: 'I will yield to
your opinion that physical labor is not the right thing for Susanna. But
a life of dreamy idleness I consider far more injurious to her. Indeed,
Klaus, my personal feelings toward Susanna do not speak in this. I do
not hate her, but that her nature is uncongenial to me I must own. So,
then, without regard to that, Klaus, I must repeat what I said this
morning: let Susanna go away from here, take care of her somewhere else;
she is out of place here; do it for her own sake.'

"She had spoken beseechingly, and stepping nearer him, laid her right
hand on his shoulder.

"'Well, what more?' he asked, rapidly stroking his beard. 'Where would
you think best to banish this child?'

"'Send her to a good boarding-school; let her be a teacher; she is poor,
and it is an honorable position, or----'

"'You are probably thinking of Mademoiselle Lenon in this connection,
Anna Maria?' rejoined Klaus. 'I still have her "honorable position"
distinctly before my eyes, which she held in dealing with your
stubbornness. If there ever was a being totally unfit to take upon
herself the martyrdom of a governess, it is Susanna Mattoni!'

"A slight shadow passed over Anna Maria's face as he spoke of her
stubbornness, but she was silent.

"'Perhaps,' continued Klaus bitterly, 'you would also like to make an
actress of her because she happens to have a voice and recites
charmingly.' He pushed away the newspapers and sprang up. 'I am
unutterably exasperated, Anna Maria, that you should venture to repeat
this proposition. I was not prepared for it, I must confess! What makes
you appear so hostile toward Susanna? Do you know, you who live here in
happy security, what it means for a girl so young, so inexperienced, to
be thus thrust into the world? Surely not! You fulfil your duties here,
you care and labor as hundreds would not do in your place; but here you
act the mistress, inapproachable, untouched by all the common things of
life. You do not know, even by name, those humiliations which a woman
in a dependent position must endure. I know, indeed, that hundreds
_must_ endure them, and hundreds, perhaps, do not feel what they are
deprived of; but this girl _would_ feel it, and would be unhappy, most
unhappy!

"He paused for a moment and looked at Anna Maria. She had clasped her
hands, and coldly and steadily returned his look; an almost moc