urs passed by without the mother and daughter opening their lips
even to speak on indifferent subjects. They were more occupied with
each other than ever, and showed it in a hundred little loving ways,
only they hardly dared to allow their eyes to meet, for each had a
secret to keep. When the day got cooler, the mother was just going to
invite her child, who was walking alone in the garden, to put on her
hat and take a turn with her through the town, when Valentin suddenly
appeared with an anxious visage, and hastily announced that the chief
sergeant, who had paid his mistress a visit twelve days before, now
requested to know whether she was at home. He had something, he said,
of importance and urgency to communicate. Frau Helena--whose first idea
was some fresh imprudence on the part of Kurt--had just time to make a
sign to Valentin, enjoining silence towards Lisabethli, when in came
the stately dignitary, looking far more solemn and mysterious than he
had done on the former occasion, and requesting a private interview.
After she had led him into a small study, where he took his seat facing
her, coughed several times, and re-arranging the tags on his dress, he
began in evident embarrassment to address her as follows:--

"I need not to premise, worthy Frau Amthor, how not only your family
and house, but also your own character are held in honour by every
person, public or private, in our good town, and your virtues, as well
at the name and memory of your departed husband, looked up to as a
Christian example. It is, therefore, the universal wish to keep sorrow
far from you, and to offer you whatever consolation lies within human
power for such trial as Heaven has appointed. It will not have escaped
you that all as by common consent have long avoided touching the wound
that your son's conduct has inflicted, and I indeed as your friend and
relative, should have been especially bound never to name your lost
Andreas in your presence, if my official duty had not required me so to
do. Will you, therefore, not render my painful duty still harder to me
by suppression or evasion, but openly tell me what accounts of your son
you have lately had, and where you have reason to believe him now to
be?"

"If you ask me thus earnestly," replied the mother, without betraying
either in look or tone how fast her heart was beating; "I must, alas!
return you for answer, that it will be four years next All Saints'
since I saw my unhappy son f