out sitting down, "the carriage is waiting down-stairs,
come with me to your little wife; if you will only beg her forgiveness,
everything will be all right again."

Frank Linden looked at him calmly.

"Do you know what I should be doing?" he asked--"I should acknowledge a
wrong of which I have never been guilty."

"Ah, nonsense! Never mind that! This is the question now, will you have
your wife back again or not?"

"Is that the condition on which my wife will return to me?"

"Why, of course. Oh, ta, ta! I am sure at least that she would come
then."

"I am sorry, but I cannot do it," replied the young man, growing a
shade paler. "It is not for me to beg pardon."

"You are an obstinate set, and that is all there is about it,"
thundered Uncle Henry. "We are glad that the scoundrel is dead, and now
here we are in just the same place as we were before."

"The scoundrel's death is a very unfortunate event for me, uncle."

"You will not?" asked the old gentleman again.

"Ask her pardon--no!"

"Then good-bye!" And Uncle Henry put on his hat and hastily left the
room and the house.

"Allow me to accompany you down," said Frank, following the little man,
who jumped into the carriage as if he were fleeing from some one.

But before the horses started he bent forward and an expression of
intense anxiety rested on his honest old face.

"See here, Frank," he whispered, "it is a foolish pride of yours.
Women have their little whims and caprices. It is true I never had a
wife--thank Heaven for that!--but I know them very well for all that.
They have such ideas, they must all be worshipped, and the little one
is particularly sharp about it. She is like her father, my good old
Lebrecht, a little romantic--I always said the child read too much. Now
do you be the wise one to give in. You have not been so hurt either,
and--besides she is a charming little woman."

"As soon as Gertrude comes back everything shall be forgotten," replied
Linden, shutting the carriage door.

"But she won't come so, my boy. Don't you know the Baumhagen obstinacy
yet?" cried Uncle Henry in despair.

He shrugged his shoulders and stepped back.

"To Waldruhe!" shouted the old man angrily to the coachman, and away he
went.

"My young gentleman is playing a dangerous game as injured innocence,"
he growled, pounding his cane on the bottom of the carriage. The nearer
he came to the villa, the redder grew his angry round face. When he
reached "