aused on
the threshold upon beholding me thus unexpectedly, took his spectacles
quickly from his nose, and looked angrily at me. Not a little alarmed,
I started up, and, without saying a word, ran out of the door and
through the little garden, where I was very nearly tripped up by the
confounded potato-vines which the old Receiver had planted, evidently
by the Porter's advice, in place of my flowers. I heard him as he
came out of the door scolding after me, but I was mounted atop of the
garden wall, and gazing with a throbbing heart over into the castle
garden.

Ah, how the birds were flitting and twittering and singing! The lawns
and paths were deserted, but the gilded tree-tops nodded a welcome to
me in the evening breeze, and on one side, up through masses of dark
green foliage, gleamed the Danube.

Suddenly I heard sung from the depths of the garden--

"When the yearning heart is stilled
As in dreams, the forest sighing,
To the listening earth replying,
Tells the thoughts with which 'twas filled,
Days long vanished, soothing sorrow--
From the Past a light they borrow,
And the heart is gently thrilled."

The voice and the song were strangely familiar, as if I had heard
them somewhere in a dream. I pondered over and over again, and at last
exclaimed, joyfully, "It is Herr Guido!" swinging myself quickly down
into the garden. It was the selfsame song that he had sung on the
balcony of the Italian inn on that summer evening when I saw him for
the last time.

He went on singing, while I bounded over beds and hedges toward the
singer. But as I emerged from between the last clumps of rose-bushes I
suddenly paused spellbound. For on the green opening beside the little
lake with the swans, clearly illuminated in the ruddy evening light,
on a stone bench sat the lovely Lady fair in a beautiful dress, with
a wreath of red and white roses on her dark-brown hair, and downcast
eyes, tracing lines on the green-sward with her riding-whip, just as
she had sat in the skiff when I was forced to sing her the song of
the Lady fair. Opposite her sat another young lady, with brown curls
clustering on a plump white neck, which was turned toward me; she was
singing to a guitar, while the swans glided in wide circles on the
placid water. All at once the Lady fair raised her eyes, and gave
a scream on perceiving me. The other lady turned round toward me so
quickly that her brown curls fell over her eyes, and whe