gly over the cheek
of the silent youth, and said: "I can't help it, child; I really ought
to have kept it to myself, for I know you always take my troubles to
heart far more than I do. It is this confounded habit of sharing
everything with you! Well, it is no great misfortune after all. We
shall be perfectly sensible--entirely cured of our folly--to-morrow,
and if anything should still be out of order, for what purpose has
Father Kant written the admirable treatise on 'the power the mind
possesses to rule the sickly emotions of the heart by the mere exercise
of will'?"

He stooped, pressed his lips lightly upon the pale forehead of the
youth, and then threw himself upon his bed. A few notes of the piano
still echoed on the air, but these too now died away, and in fifteen
minutes Balder perceived by Edwin's calm, regular breathing, that he
had really fallen asleep. He himself still lay with his eyes wide open,
gazing quietly at the mask of the prisoner on the stove, absorbed in
thoughts, which, for the present, may remain his secret.

CHAPTER III.

We have now to relate the little that is to be told of the two
brothers' former life.

About thirty years before, their father, during a holiday excursion,
had made their mother's acquaintance; he was then a young law-student
from Silesia, and she the beautiful daughter of the owner of a small
estate in Holstein, who had other views for his favorite child than to
give her to the first embryo Prussian lawyer, who had enjoyed a few
days' hospitality at his house. And yet no objections were made. All,
who knew the young girl, declared that it had always been impossible to
oppose her quietly expressed wishes; she had possessed so much power
over all minds, both by her great beauty and the gentle nobleness of
her nature, which in everything she did and said always seemed to hit
the right mark, with that almost prophetic insight into the confused
affairs of the world, which is said to have been peculiar to German
seeresses. What particular attractions she found in the unassuming
stranger, that she wanted him and no one else for her husband, was not
easy to discover. Yet to her last hour she had no occasion to repent,
that, with firm resolution, beneath which perhaps passionate emotions
were concealed, she had aided in removing all the obstacles that stood
in the way of a speedy marriage. As she herself brought little dowry,
except her wealt