nge-trees, between the pleasure and the fruit-gardens, as if dropped
by a falcon in mid air. Ottilia beheld it, and started. Her little maid
walking close by, exclaimed, scuttling round in front of her the while
like an urchin in sabots,

'Ha! what is it? a snake? let me! let me!' The guileless mistress
replied, 'A letter!' Whereupon the maid said: 'Not a window near! and no
wall neither! Why, dearest princess, we have walked up and down here
a dozen times and not seen it staring at us! Oh, my good heaven!' The
letter was seized and opened, and Ottilia read:

'He who loves you with his heart has been cruelly used. They have
shot him. He is not dead. He must not die. He is where he has
studied since long. He has his medicine and doctors, and they say
the bullet did not lodge. He has not the sight that cures. Now is
he, the strong young man, laid helpless at anybody's mercy.'

She supped at her father's table, and amused the margravine and him
alternately with cards and a sonata. Before twelve at midnight she was
driving on the road to the University, saying farewell to what her mind
reverenced, so that her lover might but have sight of her. She imagined
I had been assassinated. For a long time, and most pertinaciously,
this idea dwelt with her. I could not dispossess her of it, even after
uttering the word 'duel' I know not how often. I had flatly to relate
the whole-of the circumstances.

'But Otto is no assassin,' she cried out.

What was that she reverenced? It was what she jeopardized--her state,
her rank, her dignity as princess and daughter of an ancient House,
things typical to her of sovereign duties, and the high seclusion of her
name. To her the escapades of foolish damsels were abominable. The laws
of society as well as of her exalted station were in harmony with her
intelligence. She thought them good, but obeyed them as a subject, not
slavishly: she claimed the right to exercise her trained reason. The
modestest, humblest, sweetest of women, undervaluing nothing that she
possessed, least of all what was due from her to others, she could go
whithersoever her reason directed her, putting anything aside to act
justly according to her light. Nor would she have had cause to repent
had I been the man she held me to be. Even with me she had not behaved
precipitately. My course of probation was severe and long before she
allowed her heart to speak.

Pale from a sleepless night and her heart's we