asked Bella, extending her hand to the old
woman.

"Not yours," said the gipsy. "But I want that one next you to show me
her hand." With great reluctance, Manna consented. The old woman gave a
wild cry, and exclaimed:--

"You have a lover by your side, but you must go across the water to get
him, and water must flow from your handsome black eyes. But then three
sons and two daughters shall you have----"

Here Manna tore her hand away; and walked on apart from the rest of the
party. Much as she despised this criminal sport, and little as the
whole company believed in it, it yet strangely affected her. Could
Pranken have been the originator of it? It almost seemed so, and yet he
was innocent of the whole thing.

"I should like to pronounce a ban," cried Bella.

"What sort of one?" asked all present.

"That for the next fifty years the gipsies should be under its power;
that no poet should dare to sing of them."

Manna went on with the others, but she and all around her seemed as in
a dream. In her heart she felt that all this had happened, in order
that the thought of it might one day serve to recall the world to her
mind, when she had left it forever. It already seemed distant; among
the things of the past. She stood in the life about her as not a part
of it, and she was not of it, for the one thought was ever present to
her of renouncing it altogether. This year in the world was her trial
year, and she rejoiced to think that several months of it were already
gone.

Bella, who prided herself upon her skill in reading character, often
shook her head, and confessed to her brother that she could make
nothing out of Manna; in vain she tried to win her confidence; there
was something at bottom which she could not fathom. Manna never spoke
to Bella of her desire to return to the convent. Bella now put her arm
about Manna's waist, and teased her about the three sons and two
daughters, but the girl only smiled as if the words had been addressed
to some other person.

On the brow of the hill, under the shade of the pine-trees, carpet's
had been spread for the ladies, where they rested, while the gentlemen
still sat at table, and, at the suggestion of the long lieutenant, who
had finished his sketch, passed round the wine.

"Why are you not of the nobility?" asked the long lieutenant of
Sonnenkamp.

"Because Herr Sonnenkamp is a citizen," replied Clodwig.

"Citizens can be made nobles when they have millions----"