that I kiss thy dear hand after so many,
many years!" And it was with a tender
and sorrowful earnestness that Albrecht
performed that simple act of German
reverence.

But from the black bed, now more truly
like a grave than ever, came no response,
no sound, no sign that a living soul lay
there; that the ear heard, or the heart felt
the passionate adjuration addressed to it.

Magda, as she looked and listened, felt
still so utterly bewildered that she could
only keep asking herself whether it was not
all a dream—whether, in truth, it was her
Albrecht whom she saw and heard. Yet,
at the window where she lay, the night,
with its myriad stars, was gone; the pale
opal light of morning was breaking in the
east; she could even hear the soft dewy
twitter of awakening birds. It was no
dream; she could recal it all, the lonely,
dreary evening, the terrible night—no, she
was not dreaming, and that was her
Albrecht, in the flesh, before her. But
she felt an aching giddiness in her
head; she raised her hand, and withdrew
it, covered with blood. In falling she had
struck herself, and, concealed by the masses
of unrolled hair, the wound had escaped
Bettine's attention. The old woman now
ran to fetch the necessary means of staunching
it, but the loss of blood had been
considerable. Magda attempted to raise her
head, but the room swam round with her;
a film gathered across her eyes, and before
Bettine's return, her young mistress had
relapsed once more into unconsciousness.

Many hours after, in another and very
different room in the schloss, a room
surrounded with implements of the chase, the
walls bristling with antlers, the polished
floor pleasantly islanded with skins of deer
and chamois, the young gräfin lay upon the
jäger's bed, and her husband sat beside
her. He had had her carried there, as
being the most cheerful room in the house,
and here he had been tending her, and
(seeing her weak and excited condition)
had enforced absolute silence, after her
return to consciousness, and had answered
her questions in monosyllables. But now,
the day was far spent; the darkness, that
season of feverish terror during which
she had suffered so acutely twenty-four
hours before, was at hand; it was well to
tell her all, and to calm her mind by a
knowledge of the truth. So there he sat,
beside the little bed on which his young
wife lay, holding her hand, and with a face
on which could be clearly traced the
impress of a recent and heavy trouble, he told
her his story of the past in these words:

"It is all over now, my Magda—the
mystery of our moated schloss—the hope and
the despair of my life, which I dared not
confide to thee; it is all over now. I can
tell thee everything. . . . Why did I
beseech thee to come here? What end was
there to be gained by this? Listen. It is
a sad enough story, which has embittered
all my life, and the effects of which, in
some sort, I shall carry to my grave. . . .

"Thou hast heard of poor Louise? She
was my only sister, my senior by five years,
and my mother's favourite, who doated on
this daughter with an intensity which
blinded her to every other object, and
made her regard even me—strange as it
may seem—in the light of an interloper,
whose coming to divide the inheritance
with her first-born was an injury and a
wrong. My father, on the other hand, was
very fond of me; but he died when I was
nine; and for many years there was only
Louise's sweet nature and her love for me
to counteract the coldness and neglect of
my poor partial mother. . . . God knows I
never resented this. . . . I never ceased
to love her; a kind word from her at any
time made me as happy as a king . . . and
I know now that even at that time, poor
soul, her brain was in a measure diseased,
and she was suffering under the chronic
monomania which afterwards assumed an
acute form.

"My sister occupied the tower where you
slept last night; her sitting-room below, her
bedroom above. A panel behind the arras,
and a winding stair cut in the thickness of
the wall, lead from these rooms to those
that my mother inhabited. Thus she could
visit her favourite child at all hours of the
day and night without traversing the long
corridor and public stair; and of this
privilege she availed herself so constantly
that I never knew her come to Louise's
room by any other way.

"One evening, when I was about fifteen,
I was in this room, plaguing my sister
while she was dressing, by performing all
manner of gymnastic feats, of which I was
very proud, but which only alarmed her.
At last, I bethought me of a water-pipe
outside the window, which ran into the
moat, and down which I thought it would
be good sport to slide. Before Louise saw
what I was about, I sprang on to the
window-sill, and, clinging hold of the mullion
with one hand, sought the pipe with the