d-by you
will laugh at them as I do now. And when you come home this evening, I
hope you will bring us your own bright face again, and the best
resolutions henceforth, to honour and obey your own little mother, that
your days may be--as the fourth commandment says. Bless you, my son."

She looked back affectionately at him, and waved her hand to say
good-bye, and then she walked steadily over the plank, with her light
elastic step, and turned into one of the paths that led through the
wood on the other side.

As long as she was to be seen, Walter looked after her; then he flung
himself on the grass, with his face to the ground, in an agony of shame
and grief, and self-reproach. He did not know that as soon as she was
out of sight, her brave heart failed her; she stopped, and leaning her
head against the stem of a young tree, she too relieved herself by a
flood of tears.

* * * * *

The day was fading into twilight; in the Meister's room it had grown
too dark for him to do anything until the lamp was brought. Putting by
the watercolor sketch of Naples and Mount Vesuvius, in which he had
been making some alterations in the foreground with a piece of chalk,
he was just about to exchange his favorite old dressing gown with the
sheepskin, for a more appropriate garment for an evening walk, when the
door was opened noiselessly, and Helen came in, with a serene
countenance, and an unfaltering voice that belied all her agitations of
the morning.

"Good evening, brother. I have been longer away than I expected. I had
a little piece of business to do on my way home, that should have been
settled long ago--Christel has been taking good care of you, I hope?
How have you been? better?"

The unusual friendliness of her manner took him by surprise, and
stopped the reproaches that had been ready on his lips. "How does the
gallery get on?" he asked, instead of answering. "You will have been
standing chattering there so long, that there will not have been much
work done."

"I left the gallery about twelve o'clock;" she said with a faint blush.
"If I had not gone astray among the woods, and done that business on my
way back, I should have been here ever so long ago. After all, it would
not so much signify, if the work were to last a few days longer. The
grounds are hardly planned, and the gallery will certainly be finished
in a week. Have you heard whether that assistant is to be counted on?