Albrecht stooped, and drew out a box from
under the seat of the carriage. He then
unlocked and took from it, to Magda's
infinite surprise, a queer little hat, and still
queerer little garment, the like of which
Magda had never seen, but which she
subsequently learnt had been called in former
days, "a spencer." Moreover, there was a
short and narrow skirt of silk, having an
absurd little flounce round the bottom,
such as Magda believed her mother to have
worn years ago. She asked, with a smile
of wonder, what all this meant.

"Thou dear heart!" cried Albrecht,
embracing her, " it means that here we must
part, and that I beg, as a further favour
to me, that thou wilt exchange thy pretty
hat and mantle for these faded old-fashioned
ones: nay, if it be possible, thy skirt also.
Do not ask any questions. It is a fancy of
mine—an absurd fancy, that in the old
house where all belongs to another date,
another generation, thou shouldst not seem
to flout the poor old servants and the
pictures on the wall, with thy new fangled
clothes. . . . And now farewell, my beloved
one! . . . God keep thee! Be of good
courage, and Heaven will reward thy
going!"

With that, he kissed her with an energy
akin to desperation, and leaped from the
carriage. The tears forced themselves into
her blue eyes, though she tried to smile as
she tied on the little old hat, and slipped
on the spencer. The carriage was then
rolling on, and she blew him kisses, and
sent him April smiles through her tears, as
long as he was in sight. Then when the
carriage turned sharply to the left, and she
could no longer see him, the sun went in,
and the shower was heavy. The poor child
felt that she was now, indeed, alone. A
moment afterwards the carriage drew up on
the edge of a small square lake, in the
centre of which, without an inch of earth to
spare on any side, rose an equally square
grey stone building with a high red-tiled
roof, and innumerable towers, turrets, and
pinnacles, breaking the sky line. Through
the moat—for such the lake was termed—
a stream flowed constantly, born among
the hills, and growing in its passage
through the forest, till it had been widened
and deepened by the hand of man into this
broad basin, and was then suffered to
escape, a dwindled rivulet, and hide itself in
the forest once again. Looking down from
the windows of the schloss, one saw to the
very bottom of the dark green water, where
long weeds and grasses, like dusky plumes,
swayed to and fro with the current, and
the great brown shadow of a fish darted,
ever and anon, athwart the mystery of
tangled rushes; and carrying the eye on
towards the bank, one caught moreover a
confused outline of crawling animal life,
where-with the black ooze teemed. It was like
looking down into a human heart (if such
a thing could be), and watching its
network of multifarious miseries and desires,
drifted by the secret currents of passion—
the swift thought darting across it—the
crawling meanness lurking in the impurity
of its muddy places.

A long-disused portcullis showed that
that there had once been a drawbridge:
but a narrow one, for foot-passengers only,
had supplanted it, some time in the preceding
century, and had already acquired a
respectable air of antiquity.

Two old men, in liveries of a strangely
old-fashioned make, were standing on the
bridge. They were evidently waiting for
Magda, and as the calèche drew up, they
let down the steps, and handed her out.
The postilion had received his orders, no
doubt, beforehand. The grey-headed men
had no sooner lightened the carriage of its
human freight, and cut the cord of the
valises that hung behind, than, without a
word, he turned his horses' heads, and drove
off into the forest by the way he had come.
To poor Magda, it seemed as if the last link
that held her to the dear outer world — that
held her to her Albrecht, was now severed.
She looked up at the stern unfriendly building
and down at its black shadow in the
moat, and she shuddered as she passed
under the iron teeth of its portcullis, and
heard the gate locked behind her. She
found herself in a low stone hall, the groined
roof of which rested on arches. At the
further end was a winding stair, which led
to the dwelling-rooms.

A woman, past middle-age, stood
expectant in the middle of the hall, and came
forward to kiss Magda's hand, after the
old German custom, as her new mistress
entered. But though there was no want of
alacrity shown in rendering this
conventional act of respect as there was no want
of alacrity, indeed, in anything the woman
did—nothing of pleasure was evinced. One
might have thought that the greeting a
pretty young creature to that grim old
place, tenanted hitherto only by grim old
servants, might have brought some spark of
cordiality into their eyes—which foreign
servants are not afraid to let light up their
faces. But it was not so here. The old