o Manna, who pressed it to her heaving breast.

"Oh, I never imagined," she cried, "that there was such a world in the
world."

Every drop of blood seemed to have retreated from her face; she begged
the Mother to be allowed to go into the house; she would like to be
alone, she was so weary.

The Mother accompanied her. Manna reclined upon the sofa, and the
curtains were drawn; she fell asleep with the manuscript in her hand.

The Mother and Eric sat together, and Eric determined to make use of
this first opportunity, when there was no immediate duty binding him,
to publish the incomplete and fragmentary writings left by his father,
as there would be found many to make them into a whole within their own
souls.

He now felt all at once free and full of life; now there was something
for him to do; and he could fulfil at the same time a pious, filial
duty, and his duty as a man. He could make essential additions from his
own knowledge, and from his father's verbal statements.

He went back to the library, and was deeply engaged in the writings,
when Manna entered.

"You here?" she said. "I wanted to take one look at the outside of all
the books on which your father's eye has rested. I must now go home,
but I have to day received a great deal more than I can tell."

"May I accompany you?"

Manna assented.

They went together across the meadow to the Villa.

CHAPTER XV.

EVERYTHING IN FLAMES.

With lingering step they walked by each other's side, Manna often
looking aside to survey the landscape, and yet conscious all the time
that Eric was observing her. And then Eric would turn away, still
feeling that her eye rested upon him.

"You are happy in possessing the thoughts of such a father," said
Manna, feelingly.

Eric could make no reply, for the feeling oppressed him, how the poor
rich child would be overwhelmed, if she knew what he did concerning her
own father; he had no conception that Manna's words were wrung out by
this very tribulation.

"I cannot become the heir of my father's thoughts," he said, after an
interval. "Each child must live out his own life."

They continued to walk side by side, and it seemed to them, at every
step, that they must stop and hold each other in a loving embrace.

"Roland and my father are now on their way home," said Manna.

"And Herr von Pranken also," Eric was about to add, but refrained from
doing it.