the drawing-room door, and waited.

Mrs. Wagner's heart suddenly quickened its beat.

Under what influence? Could it be fear? She was indignant with herself at
the bare suspicion of it. Her face flushed deeply, under the momentary
apprehension that some outward change might betray her. She left the
room, without even trusting herself to look at the woman who stood by the
open door, and bowed to her with an impenetrable assumption of respect as
she passed out.

Madame Fontaine remained in the drawing-room.

She violently closed the door with a stroke of her hand--staggered across
the room to a sofa--and dropped on it. A hoarse cry of rage and despair
burst from her, now that she was alone. In the fear that someone might
hear her, she forced her handkerchief into her mouth, and fastened her
teeth into it. The paroxysm passed, she sat up on the sofa, and wiped the
perspiration from her face, and smiled to herself. "It was well I stopped
here," she thought; "I might have met someone on the stairs."

As she rose to leave the drawing-room, Fritz's voice reached her from the
far end of the corridor.

"You are out of spirits, Minna. Come in, and let us try what a little
music will do for you."

The door leading into the recess was opened. Minna's voice became audible
next, on the inner side of the curtains.

"I am afraid I can't sing to-day, Fritz. I am very unhappy about mamma.
She looks so anxious and so ill; and when I ask what is troubling her,
she puts me off with an excuse."

The melody of those fresh young tones, the faithful love and sympathy
which the few simple words expressed, seemed to wring with an unendurable
pain the whole being of the mother who heard them. She lifted her hands
above her head, and clenched them in the agony which could only venture
to seek that silent means of relief. With swift steps, as if the sound of
her daughter's voice was unendurable to her, she made for the door. But
her movements, on ordinary occasions the perfection of easy grace, felt
the disturbing influence of the agitation that possessed her. In avoiding
a table on one side, as she passed it, she struck against a chair on the
other.

Fritz instantly opened the curtains, and looked through. "Why, here is
mamma!" he exclaimed, in his hearty boyish way.

Minna instantly closed the piano, and hastened to her mother. When Madame
Fontaine looked at her, she paused, with an expression of alarm. "Oh, how
dreadfully pale and i