novel happier than hers? Poor, orphaned, homeless--she suddenly
comes into possession of a farm, and is loved and petted, and it all
comes about as naturally as if such a thing might happen any day! She
must have been very charming," she added after a pause, "I always
imagine her tall and slender, with raven hair and grey eyes, a black
ribbon round her fair neck, and ear rings with a red stone, which is
really only a bit of glass--"

"By the way," he interrupted, "I have long wanted to ask you something:
why do you wear no earrings or jewelry of any kind?"

"Because I am too poor to get large diamonds or real pearls, and I do
not care for any other ornaments."

"Too poor?"

"Yes indeed, much too poor, far poorer than you perhaps suppose, at any
rate poorer than Dorothea, who possessed the greatest treasure,
contentment. I, on the contrary--do you suppose I should have
considered it a happiness to become Frau Hermann?"

"If you had really been in love with him--"

She looked at him quietly, as if trying to discover whether he was in
earnest, and then said:

"You're a singular person. Wisdom does not seem to be any protection
against folly, and you take no notice of the existence of anything that
does not accord with your system. How often must I explain to you, that
I have no idea of what you call being in love. And see, even in your
Dorothea, though created by a poet--and falling in love plays so
prominent a part in all poetry--yet I can discover no trace of this
singular condition. She meets a young man, who leads her from the
street into his house and wishes to make her his wife. As he seems kind
and good, and promises to become one of those persons who are
represented as pattern husbands--why should she say no, especially as
the pastor and doctor and provincial customs are not at all repulsive
to her? And that's just why I envy her. I, on the contrary--but please
throw a few sticks of wood on the fire; it's going out."

He did as she requested, and was kneeling before the hearth kindling
the flames anew with a dainty pair of bellows, when a noise and
altercation arose in the entry, which attracted his attention. The
whinning voice of little Jean, eagerly arguing with a deep bass, was
distinctly audible, then the door of the ante-room was thrown open, and
the disputants approached the little drawing room; the stranger, with a
rude laugh, pushed aside the boy, who endeavored to prevent his
entrance, there wa