good, if they must omit doing what was noble because
the bad committed the basest things under the cloak of deceit.

Bella now advised her husband to send a messenger to Eric immediately,
so that he might not enter into any engagement. Clodwig pressed her
hand, and went into his study, with an elastic step not often seen in
him. He began to write there, but soon came to Bella and said that he
could not write, and the simplest thing to do was to order the carriage
and drive over at once to Villa Eden.

Clodwig avoided, as a general thing, all immediate connection with
Sonnenkamp and his family, so far as it was possible with the intimacy
of his brother-in-law there, but to-day nothing was said of this, and
they drove off in good spirits.

Frau Bella often drew her veil down over her face and raised it again;
she was very uneasy, for she thought over a great many things, and when
she noticed the quick beating of her heart, she grasped hastily her
husband's hand, saying,--

"Ah! you are so good, so angel-pure! I could never have believed that I
should be continually discovering new excellencies in you."

With the utterance of these words aloud, she silenced in some degree
the voice speaking within her what she was not willing to acknowledge
to herself,--yes, she consciously disowned it. It is an
incomprehensible whim, a freak--not of passion, no--how could Bella
confess that of herself? It was the freak of an evil spirit! This young
man must possess some incomprehensible, bewildering, magic influence!
Bella hated him, for he had disturbed the quiet of her husband, and now
was attempting to do the same with her. He should atone for that! She
straightened herself back; she was resolved to interrupt the childish,
enthusiastic plan of her husband by the very means of her going with
him, and if Eric did not perceive her opposition, she would acknowledge
it in so many words, and thereby induce him to decline.

Entertaining this thought, she looked up again in a cheerful mood, and
Clodwig, perceiving it, settled upon a room for Eric, and laid out the
new household arrangement.

A new member of the family too was to be added for Bella, as she was to
invite Eric's mother to visit them. It was fortunate that Bella had
already known her for some time before, and held her in high esteem.
Clodwig informed her that the Dournays also were really of the
nobility, and their appellation was Dournay de Saint Mort, and that
they had