did talk to him, and
looked friendly, and affected to understand and be deeply interested in
all he said.

They passed through a plantation of young beeches, planted, Dellwig
explained, by Uncle Joachim on his last visit; and after a few more
yards of lurching in the sand came to some woods and got on to a fair
road.

"The park," said Dellwig superbly, with a wave of the hand.

Susie opened her eyes at the word park, and looked about. "It isn't a
park," she said peevishly, "it's a forest--a horrid, gloomy, damp
wilderness."

"Oh, it's lovely!" cried Letty, giving a jump of delight as she peered
down the serried ranks of pine trees.

It was a thick wood of pines and beeches, railed off from the road on
either side by wooden rails painted in black and white stripes. Uncle
Joachim had been the loyalest of Prussians, and his loyalty overflowed
even into his fences. AEsthetic instincts he had none, and if he had been
brought to see it, would not have cared at all that the railings made
the otherwise beautiful avenue look like the entrance to a restaurant or
a railway station. The stripes, renewed every year, and of startling
distinctness, were an outward and visible sign of his staunch devotion
to the King of Prussia, the very lining of the carriage with its white
and black squares was symbolic; and when they came to the gate within
which the house itself stood, two Prussian eagles frowned down at them
from the gate-posts.

CHAPTER VI

A low, white, two-storied house, separated from the forest only by a
circular grass plot and a ditch with half-melted snow in it and muddy
water, a house apparently quite by itself among the creaking pines,
neither very old nor very new, with a great many windows, and a
brown-tiled roof, was the home bestowed by Uncle Joachim on his dear and
only niece Anna.

"So _this_ is where I was to lead the better life?" she thought, as the
carriage drew up at the door, and the moaning of the uneasy trees, and
all the lonely sounds of a storm-beaten forest replaced the rattling of
the wheels in her ears. "The better life, then, is a life of utter
solitude, Uncle Joachim thought? I wish I knew--I wish I knew----" But
what it was she wished she knew was hardly clear in her mind; and her
thoughts were interrupted by a very untidy, surprised-looking
maid-servant, capless, and in felt slippers, who had darted down the
steps and was unfastening the leather apron and pulling out the rugs
wi