ld home
without doing something, making some attempt, which might be at least
a token to herself that she had not been heartless in regard to her
lover. She wrote therefore with much difficulty the following few
words, which Fanny promised that her husband should endeavour to
convey to the hands of Ludovic Valcarm:

DEAR LUDOVIC,--My aunt has come here for me, and takes
me back to Nuremberg to-morrow. When you left me at the
station I was too ill to go to the place you told me; so
they sent to this house, and my dear, dear friend Fanny
Heisse got her husband to come for me, and I am in their
house now. Then my aunt came, and she will take me home
to-morrow. I am so unhappy that you should be in trouble!
I hope that my coming with you did not help to bring it
about. As for me, I know it is best that I should go back,
though I think that it will kill me. I was very wicked to
come. I feel that now, and I know that even you will have
ceased to respect me. Dear Ludovic, I hope that God will
forgive us both. It will be better that we should never
meet again, though the thought that it must be so is
almost more than I can bear. I have always felt that I was
different from other girls, and that there never could
be any happiness for me in this world. God bless you,
Ludovic. Think of me sometimes,--but never, never, try to
come for me again.

L. T.

It had cost her an hour of hard toil to write this little letter,
and when it was written she felt that it was cold, ungrateful,
unloving,--very unlike the words which he would feel that he had a
right to expect from her. Nevertheless, such as it was, she gave
it to her friend Fanny, with many injunctions that it might, if
possible, be placed in the hands of Ludovic. And thus, as she told
herself repeatedly on her way home, the romance of her life was over.
After all, the journey to Augsburg would have been serviceable to
her,--would be serviceable although her character should be infamous
for ever in the town that knew her,--if by that journey she would be
saved from all further mention of the name of Peter Steinmarc. No
disgrace would be so bad as the prospect of that marriage. Therefore,
as she journeyed homeward, sitting opposite to her aunt, she
endeavoured to console herself by reflecting that his suit to her
would surely be at an end. Would it ever reach his dull heart that
she had consented to destroy her