how it sounded in our ears and
in our hearts! For a long time we could not believe it. After fifteen
years of deceived hopes we hardly dared to believe in such happiness. I
longed to embrace the knees of my benefactor, but he was already far
distant from us. A few friendly lines came from him, which reconciled my
husband to his happiness, and Jacobi's renunciation, and which made the
measure of his noble behaviour full. I have not yet been able to thank
him; but you, his amiable bride, say to him----"

We omit the outpourings which closed this letter; they proceeded from a
warm, noble heart, overflowing with happiness and gratitude.

The needles fell from the fingers of the sisters as the mother, at
Louise's request, read this letter aloud, and astonishment, sympathy,
and a kind of admiring pleasure might be read in their looks. They all
gazed one on the other with silent and tearful eyes.

Gabriele was the first who broke silence: "So, then, we shall keep our
Louise with us yet longer," said she gaily, while she embraced her; and
all united cordially in the idea.

"But," sighed Leonore, "it is rather a pity, on account of our wedding
and our parsonage; we had got all so beautifully arranged."

Louise shed a few quiet tears, but evidently not merely over the
disappointed expectation. Later in the evening the mother talked with
her, and endeavoured to discover what were her feelings under these
adverse circumstances.

Louise replied, with all her customary candour, that at first it had
fallen very heavily upon her. "I had now," continued she, "fixed my
thoughts so much on an early union with Jacobi; I saw so much in my new
condition which would be good and joyful for us all. But though this is
now--and perhaps for ever, at an end, yet I do not exactly know if I
wish it otherwise; Jacobi has behaved so right, so nobly right, I feel
that I now prize him higher, and love him more than ever!"

It was difficult to the Judge not to be more cheerful than common this
evening. He was inexpressibly affectionate towards his eldest daughter;
he was charmed with the way in which she bore her fate, and it seemed to
him as if she had grown considerably.

On the following day they quietly went on again with the quilting of the
bed-cover, whilst Gabriele read aloud; and thus "the childhood of Eric
Menved" diverted with its refreshing magic power all thoughts from the
parsonage and its lost paradise to the rich middle age of Denma