ened hair and her torn
bodice. The old woman saw her daughter's shoeless feet. She looked at her
searchingly, her face darkening and hardening from annoyance to real
anger and distrust. 'Wilhelmine,' she said harshly, 'explain your
extraordinary appearance. Where have you been, and why do you come home
in this strange and unbecoming manner?'

'Mother,' answered the girl, 'let me take off my wet clothes and I will
tell you everything.' She wished to gain time to concoct a plausible
story, for she did not intend to mention Mueller's outbreak.

In the first place she was horribly ashamed, and knowing Frau von
Graevenitz's garrulous tongue she feared to be made the subject of the
citizens' gossip. But her mother was not to be put off so easily. She
drew the girl into the kitchen, and after shutting the larder door in the
servant-maid's astonished face, she planted herself firmly in front of
Wilhelmine. 'Now,' she said, 'you will favour me with your story. It is
strange to see a young maiden return in this state of disarray from an
interview with a man, and I insist upon your clearing yourself
immediately if you can.'

'Interview with a man, mother?' said Wilhelmine; 'what do you mean?' It
flashed across her that Frau von Graevenitz must have seen her enter
Mueller's house.

'Yes; your fine Monsieur Gabriel, with his mincing airs and his high
manners! You go to him for your studies, after two long hours you return
looking as though----Good Lord! child! answer me--what has that evil old
Frenchman done to you?'

Wilhelmine looked at her for a moment in silence; it had not struck her
that this interpretation of her dishevelled appearance could be harboured
even in her mother's suspicious mind. It filled her with indignation and
dismay for her friend; yet she realised with surprise that, could such a
thing have occurred as for Monsieur Gabriel to lose his self-control and
offend as Mueller had, it would not have disgusted her to the same extent.
Somehow, she felt it would not have debased her and humiliated her as had
the pastor's attack. For a moment she almost decided to let her mother
suspect there had been some strange scene with the organist; anything
better than own to the degradation of having suffered the insult of the
greasy burgher. Then with a revulsion of feeling, her soul sickened at
the injustice of letting Monsieur Gabriel pay the penalty of the pastor's
wicked insolence, and she remembered that her friend wo