Madaleine blushed a celestial rosy red.

But "Auf wiedersehen!" was all she said, as she left the room with a
speaking glance from her violet eyes; and, towards the evening, from the
confused bustling about which he heard going on within the villa, and
the sound of carriage wheels without driving off, Fritz knew that the
Baroness Stolzenkop and her party--amongst whom, of course, was
Madaleine--had quitted Mezieres, on their way back to the banks of the
Rhine.

CHAPTER TEN.

ON THE MOVE AGAIN.

"I wonder if she cares about that French fellow still?" thought Fritz to
himself when Madaleine had gone. "I don't believe she could have felt
for him much, from the manner in which she listened when I told her of
his death and the way she looked at that ring. Himmel! Would she
receive the news of my being shot in the same fashion, I wonder?"

Fritz, however, could not settle this momentous question satisfactorily
to his own mind just then; so he had, consequently, to leave the matter
to be decided at that blissful period when everybody thought that
"everything would come straight"--the period to which he had alluded at
the interesting instant when his slightly confidential conversation with
Madaleine was so inopportunely interrupted by the maladroit entrance of
Doctor Carl. In other words, "when the war should be over!" But, as
the worthy disciple of Aesculapius had sapiently remarked on the
occasion of his accidental interference with what might have been
otherwise a mutual understanding between the two, the war was not over
yet. The halcyon time had not arrived for the sword to be beaten into a
ploughshare, nor did there seem much prospect of such a happy
contingency in the near immediate future; for, although the contest had
already lasted three months--during which a series of terrible
engagements had invariably resulted in the defeat of the French--from
the commencement of the campaign to the capitulation of Metz, each
crushing disaster only seemed to have the effect of nerving the Gallic
race to fresh resistance and so prolong the struggle. Indeed, at the
beginning of November, 1870, with Paris laughing the idea of a siege to
scorn and new armies being rapidly organised, in the north at Saint
Quentin, in the west at Havre, and in the south at Orleans, the end of
the war appeared as far off as ever!

Fritz missed the attentions of his unwearying little nurse much, and his
convalescence did not progress