side and cold),
and, laying it on her bosom, took a snatch of a glance at her lovely
self.

After some wonder she fetched a deep sigh--not from clearly thinking
anything, but as an act of nature--and said, "Good-by!" forever, with
a little smile of irony, to her looking-glass, and all the many pretty
things that knew her.

It was her bad luck, as some people thought thereafter--or her good
luck, as herself beheld it--to get down the stairs and out of the house
without anyone being the wiser. For the widow De Wichehalse, Albert's
mother, had not been content with sealing the doom of this poor maiden,
but in that highly excited state, which was to be expected, hurried into
the house, to beard the worthy baron in his den. There she found him;
and, although he said and did all sympathy, the strain of parental
feelings could not yield without "hysterics."

All the servants, and especially Mother Eyebright (whose chief duty now
was to watch Frida), were called by the terrified baron, and with
one unanimous rush replied; so that the daughter of the house left it
without notice, and before any glances was out of sight, in the rough
ground where the deer were feeding, and the umber oak-leaves hung.

It was the dainty time when first the year begins to have a little hope
of meaning kindly--when in the quiet places often, free from any haste
of wind, or hindrances of pattering thaw, small and unimportant flowers
have a little knack of dreaming that the world expects them. Therefore
neither do they wait for leaves to introduce them, nor much weather to
encourage, but in shelfy corners come, in a day, or in a night--no man
knows quite which it is; and there they are, as if by magic, asking, "Am
I welcome?" And if anybody sees them, he is sure to answer "Yes."

Frida, in the sheltered corners and the sunny nooks of rock, saw a few
of these little things delicately trespassing upon the petulance of
spring. Also, though her troubles wrapped her with an icy mantle, softer
breath of Nature came, and sighed for her to listen to it, and to make
the best of all that is not past the sighing. More than once she stopped
to listen, in the hush of the timid south wind creeping through the
dishevelled wood; and once, but only once, she was glad to see her first
primrose and last, and stooped to pluck, but, on second thoughts, left
it to outblossom her.

So, past many a briered rock, and dingle buff with littered fern, green
holly copse whe