mother's--only better
appointed--and that there I have to be son and daughter in one, while
here I sit merely on sufferance, because, as my old friend tells me,
your son is on his travels, while a daughter is left to you such as my
mother has long vainly wished for."

At these words the old servant slipped away, for this reference to the
absent son distressed him, but Lisabethli came to her mother's rescue.
"Often," she playfully observed, "did people wish themselves a cross,
and if her mother would be candid, she would admit that she not seldom
found herself desiring better companionship than that of a silly little
daughter, her head full of freaks and fancies, who strummed on the
spinet half the day through, roasted the meat too brown, and made the
soup too light, and cost more than she was worth in ribands and
tuckers." At this the mother with a faint smile, observed that the
picture was certainly like, though somewhat darkly shaded; but that
even were it a correct one, each must accept the punishment Heaven
adjudged him. And so saying her face grew very sad, for she thought
that in her case this was but too true. The young people, however, paid
no attention, but went on chatting in the liveliest manner, and
becoming so thoroughly at home with each other that they felt like old
acquaintances; and when Lisabethli had risen from her instrument after
playing three or four national airs to their guest, the minster tower
struck twelve before any of them knew that they had been more than an
hour together.

There is little to record about the following days and evenings, except
that both the young people, and even the mother, daily thought the time
longer until--the house-door being barred and bolted--they were able to
receive their guest in safety, and chat half the night away in the
cheerful, well-lit sitting-room. They seemed to fall into this state of
things as if it always had been and must always continue, and the very
fact of having a secret to keep and a peril to avert, gave to these
innocent meetings an excitement and a charm against which even Frau
Helena herself was not quite proof. She was wise enough, however, to
foresee that there was another danger besides that of the discovery of
her hidden guest and of her own untruth. Lisabethli, who until the
present time had very seldom, and only for short periods, been in the
company of young men, had already spent eleven days under the same roof
with this stranger;