ther's wishes. That sort of thing doesn't
seem queer to continental people. But it was not so much his as the
aunt's,--the relation is farther back than that; but it serves the same
purpose. She had known about my father, and was desirous of being
friends. So after I was home about a week, and had confessed to my
father that the prospect of the marriage was not agreeable to me, he
still begged me to go."

Hanny looked almost as if she was disappointed. He smiled and resumed:--

"It is a lonely spot on the Rhine, not far from Ebberfeld. We will look
it up some day. I don't know how people can spend their lives in such
dreary places. I do not wonder my grandmother ran away with her brave
lover. The castle is fast going to ruins. There was a brother who wasted
a great deal of the patrimony before he died. The Baroness is the last
of her race. There is a poor little village at the foot of the mountain,
and some peasants who work the land; and then the cousin, who is
expected to rehabilitate the race by marrying a rich man."

"Yes." There was such a pretty, eager interest and pity in her eyes that
he smiled.

"She is six and twenty; tall, fair, with a sorrowful kind of face, that
has never been actually happy or pretty. Who could be happy in that
musty old rookery! The father, I believe, did very little for their
pleasure, but spent most of his time in town, wasting their little
substance."

"Oh, poor girl!" cried Hanny, thinking of her own father, so loving and
generous.

"She seemed to me almost as old as her mother. And then she told me her
troubles, poor thing, and I found her in heart and mind a sort of
inexperienced child. She has had a lover for two years; an enterprising
young man, who is superintendent of an iron mine some fifty miles
distant. It is the old story over again. I wish he had my grandfather's
courage and would run away with her. He has no title nor aristocratic
blood, and the mother will not consent. But I had made up my mind before
I went there, and even if I had been fancy free, I couldn't resign
myself to live in that old ruin."

"Oh, what will she do?"

"I advised her to run away." Herman Andersen laughed softly. "But I
think I persuaded them both to come to the city and visit my father.
They will find business isn't so shocking. They have lived in loneliness
until they know very little of the real world. The old castle is not
worth saving. Then I went home, and after a good deal of talkin