head—a more effective close to her sentence
than any spoken words.

"What is your name?" asked Magda,
after a pause, during which her heart
seemed to stand still. "And whereabouts
do you sleep? Is it anywhere near
me?"

"My name is Bettine. ... I sleep a
long way off, in another tower. But
Hanne sleeps close at hand to the gracious
lady. She is the head. All the gracious
lady's orders must be given to her. I am
but the second. ... I was kammermädchen
to the Fräulein Louise, and so I have
remained here."

Magda went to the window and looked
out. Twilight was slowly creeping up over
the black wood in front of her; the frogs
were croaking on the edges of the moat
below; there was no song of birds, no brisk
barking of dogs, or lowing of cattle; no
cheerful sound of other living thing. The
stillness, broken only by that horrible hoarse
music, was almost unbearable. She said to
her attendant:

"Is it always like this? Is there never
any noise? Does no one ever come
here?"

Bettine shook her head for all reply.

Then Magda descended the turret again
slowly, and returned to the parlour. One
of the white-haired men was waiting to
serve her at supper, and so she sat down,
and made a semblance of eating. When
this ceremony had been gone through, the
night was fast closing in; the shadows
deepened in the corners of the old room;
a purple bar widened and spread over the
gold floor of Heaven. Perhaps it was then
that the young Gräfin felt her loneliness
to the full for the first time. She opened
the old piano; she passed her fingers over
the loose, yellow notes of the hand-board.
What dreamy old waltzes it had known in
times when that dance was not the mad
whirl it has now become, but a slow,
swimming measure! What Ländlers and
wild Bohemian tunes, which had now
passed away into the realm of things
forgotten! No doubt the hands that once
loved to wander over those notes were long
since still. Had it the gift of speech, how
much that old piano could tell her!

She turned to the table, and opened one
of the books.

LOUISE VON RABENSBERG,
1822,
Andenken ihrer geliebten mutter,

was written in faded ink. Who was this
Louise, of whom everything here seemed
to speak? No doubt, that elder sister of
Albrecht's whom he had never named, but
of whom Magda had heard as having been
drowned twenty years ago. Why was
Bettine forbidden to speak of her?
What was the mystery concerning this
dead daughter of the house of Rabensberg?
And was it connected in any way with that
"fatal spell" Albrecht had spoken of? His
words had been incomprehensible to her at
the time; she racked her brain in trying
now to determine what definite construction
they would bear; and, above all, in
trying to find an answer to that question
of far closer personal interest, What was
the meaning of her being sent here?
How could it be given to the humble
burgher's daughter to remove any
mysterious shadow that hung over the proud
old family?

She had once read that to the pure and
holy in heart the spiritual world has no
terrors; that the weapons of the powers of
darkness fall harmless before the innocence
of a little child. Could it be that because
Albrecht had called her "good," because
he believed her to be thus pure and spotless
at heart, that he had sent her here to
drive out by her presence the dark spirit
that hovered over his house?

Alas! alas! if so, she much feared the
test would fail. How many sins did not her
conscience reproach her with! How often
had she been slothful over the house work
at home, and negligent of the washing!
How much more had she. thought of looking
neat and pretty when she went to
mass, than of the holy service! How
reluctant to confess these very sins to Father
Paulus, when she had found herself
behind the grating in the Ludwig's Kirche!
Alas! if it depended on an immaculate
conscience! . .

A clock in one of the towers struck nine.
The servants brought in, with much pomp
and ceremony, two massive silver candlesticks,
which they lighted, and then
departed. The gloom was only more oppressive
than before; an island of pale yellow
light was diffused just round the candles,
and an impenetrable darkness swallowed
up the rest of the room. Magda shivered,
and went to the window. The moon had
risen, and was pouring a flood of silver
upon the little bridge, and the trembling
reeds and sedges on the bank, and driving
back reflections, like knives, into the heart
of the steel-blue moat, and waking into a
mystery of splendour the crests and shafts