started with astonishment. I had not realised
that affairs had gone so far as this. But when
she asked me, in a stern, offended manner, what
I had meant by my conduct if I did not intend
to marry Monsieur de la Tourelle—I had
received his visits, his presents, all his various
advances without showing any unwillingness or
repugnance—(and it was all true; I had shown
no repugnance, though I did not wish to be
married to him, at least, not so soon)—what
could I do but hang my head, and silently consent
to the rapid enunciation of the only course which
now remained for me if I would not be esteemed
a heartless coquette all the rest of my days?

There was some difficulty, which I afterwards
learnt that my sister-in-law had obviated, about
my betrothal taking place from home. My
father, and Fritz especially, were for having me
return to the mill, and there be betrothed, and
from thence be married. But the Rupprechts and
Monsieur de la Tourelle were equally urgent on
the other side; and Babette was unwilling to
have the trouble of the commotion at the mill;
and also, I think, a little disliked the idea of the
contrast of my grander marriage with her own.

So my father and Fritz came over to the
betrothal. They were to stay at an inn in
Carlsruhe for a fortnight, at the end of which
time the marriage was to take place. Monsieur
de la Tourelle told me he had business at home,
which would oblige him to be absent during the
interval between the two events; and I was
very glad of it, for I did not think that he valued
my father and my brother as I could have wished
him to do. He was very polite to them; put
on all the soft, grand manner, which he had
rather dropped with me; and complimented us
all round, beginning with my father and Madame
Rupprecht, and ending with little Alwina. But
he a little scoffed at the old-fashioned church
ceremonies which my father insisted on; and I
fancy Fritz must have taken some of his
compliments as satire, for I saw certain signs of
manner by which I knew that my future
husband, for all his civil words, had irritated and
annoyed my brother. But all the money arrangements
were liberal in the extreme, and more
than satisfied, almost surprised, my father. Even
Fritz lifted up his eyebrows and whistled. I
alone did not care about anything. I was
bewitched,—in a dream,—a kind of despair. I had
got into a net through my own timidity and
weakness, and I did not see how to get out of
it. I clung to my own home-people that
fortnight as I had never done before. Their voices,
their ways were all so pleasant and familiar to
me, after the constraint in which I had been
living. I might speak and do as I liked without
being corrected by Madame Rupprecht, or
reproved in a delicate, complimentary way by
Monsieur de la Tourelle. One day I said to my
father that I did not want to be married, that I
would rather go back to the dear old mill; but
he seemed to feel this speech of mine as a
dereliction of duty as great as if I had committed
perjury; as if, after the ceremony of betrothal,
no one had any right over me but my future
husband. And yet he asked me some solemn
questions; but my answers were not such as
to do me any good.

"Dost thou know any fault or crime in this
man that should prevent God's blessing from
resting on thy marriage with him? Dost thou
feel aversion or repugnance to him in any way?"

And to all this, what could I say? l could
only stammer out that I did not think I loved
him enough; and my poor old father saw in this
reluctance only the fancy of a silly girl who did
not know her own mind, but who had now gone
too far to recede.

So we were married, in the Court chapel, a
privilege which Madame Rupprecht had used no
end of efforts to obtain for us, and which she
must have thought was to secure us all possible
happiness, both at the time and in recollection
afterwards.

We were married; and after two days spent
in festivity at Carlsruhe, among all our new
fashionable friends there, I bade good-by for
ever to my dear old father. I had begged my
husband to take me by way of Heidelberg to
his old castle in the Vosges; but I found an
amount of determination, under that effeminate
appearance and manner, for which I was not
prepared, and he refused my first request so
decidedly that I dared not urge it. "Henceforth,
Anna," said he, " you will move in a
different sphere of life; and though it is possible
that you may have the power of showing favour
to your relations from time to time, yet much or
familiar intercourse will be undesirable, and is
what I cannot allow." I felt almost afraid,
after this formal speech, of asking my father
and Fritz to come and see me; but, when the
agony of bidding them farewell overcame all
my prudence, I did beg them to pay me a visit
ere long. But they shook their heads, and spoke
of business at home, of different kinds of life, of
my being a Frenchwoman now. Only my father
broke out at last with a blessing, and said, "If
my child is unhappy—which God forbid—let her
remember that her father's house is ever open
to her." I was on the point of crying out,
"Oh! take me back then now, my father!—oh,
my father!" when I felt, rather than saw, my
husband present near me. He looked on with
a slightly contemptuous air, and taking my hand
in his, he led me weeping away, saying that short
farewells were always the best when they were
inevitable.

It took us two days to reach his château in
the Vosges, for the roads were bad and the way
difficult to ascertain. Nothing could be more
devoted than he was all the time of the journey.
It seemed as if he were trying in every way to
make up for the separation which every hour
made me feel the more complete between my
present and my former life. I seemed as if I
were only now wakening up to a full sense of
what marriage was, and I dare say I was not a
cheerful companion on the tedious journey. At
length jealousy of my regret for my father and
brother got the better of M. de la Tourelle, and
he became so much displeased with me that I