eeting to the two friends, while Eric
called out to one or another of them some order or question about
their day's work.

By this time they had reached the house. They entered a high, cool
vestibule, at the far end of which they turned to the left into a
somewhat darker passage.

Here Eric opened a door and they passed into a spacious room that
opened into a garden. The heavy mass of leafage that covered the
opposite windows filled this room at either end with a green twilight,
while between the windows two lofty wide-open folding-doors let in the
full glow of spring sunshine, and afforded a view into a garden, laid
out with circular flower-beds and steep hedgerows and divided by a
straight, broad path, along which the eye roamed out on to the lake
and away over the woods growing on the opposite shore.

As the two friends entered, a breath of wind bore in upon them a
perfect stream of fragrance.

On a terrace in front of the door leading to the garden sat a girlish
figure dressed in white. She rose and came to meet the two friends as
they entered, but half-way she stood stock-still as if rooted to the
spot and stared at the stranger. With a smile he held out his hand to
her.

"Reinhard!" she cried. "Reinhard! Oh! is it you? It is such a long
time since we have seen each other."

"Yes, a long time," he said, and not a word more could he utter; for
on hearing her voice he felt a keen, physical pain at his heart, and
as he looked up to her, there she stood before him, the same slight,
graceful figure to whom he had said farewell years ago in the town
where he was born.

Eric had stood back by the door, with joy beaming from his eyes.

"Now, then, Elisabeth," he said, "isn't he really the very last person
in the world you would have expected to see?"

Elisabeth looked at him with the eyes of a sister. "You are so kind,
Eric," she said.

He took her slender hand caressingly in his. "And now that we have
him," he said, "we shall not be in a hurry to let him go. He has been
so long away abroad, we will try to make him feel at home again. Just
see how foreign-looking he has become, and what a distinguished
appearance he has!"

Elisabeth shyly scanned Reinhard's face. "The time that we have been
separated is enough to account for that," she said.

At this moment in at the door came her mother, key-basket on arm.

"Herr Werner!" she cried, when she caught sight of Reinhard; "ah! you
are as dearly welcome as you