en mind Helena, because I felt that in a big house there'd be more
room for her to stare at me in. And Herr von Inster is going to stay
another week, taking his summer leave now instead of later, and he says
he will see me safe to Berlin when I go next Saturday.

So we had the happiest morning wandering about the forest, he driving
and letting the horses go as slowly as they liked while we talked, and
after our sandwiches he took me back to the Bornsteds, and I showed
Frau Bornsted the Grafin's letter.

If it hadn't been a Koseritz taking me away she would have been
dreadfully offended at my wanting to go when only half my fortnight was
over, but it was like a royal command to her, and she looked at me with
greatly increased interest as the object of these high attentions. She
had been inclined to warn me against Herr von Inster as a person
removed by birth from my sphere--I suppose that's because I play the
violin--and also against drives in forests generally if the parties
were both unmarried; and she had been extraordinarily dignified when I
laughed, and had told me it was all very well for me to laugh, being
only an ignorant _junges Madchen_, but she doubted whether my mother
would laugh; and she watched our departure for our picnic very stiffly
and unsmilingly from the porch. But after reading the Grafin's letter
I was treated more nearly as an equal, and she became all interest and
co-operation. She helped me pack, while Herr von Inster, who has a
great gift for quiet patience, waited downstairs; and she told me how
fortunate I was to be going to spend some days with Komtesse Helena,
from whom I could learn, she said, what the real perfect _junges
Madchen_ was like; and by the time the Grafin herself drove up in her
little carriage with the pretty white ponies, she was so much melted
and stirred by a house-guest of hers being singled out for such an
honour that she put her arm round my neck when I said good-bye, and
whispered that though it wasn't really fit for a _junges Madchen_ to
hear, she must tell me, as she probably wouldn't see me again, that she
hoped shortly after Christmas to enrich the world by yet one more
German.

I laughed and kissed her.

"It is no laughing matter," she said, with solemn eyes.

"No," I said, suddenly solemn too, remembering how Agatha Trent died.

And I took her face in both my hands and kissed her again, but with the
seriousness of a parting blessing. For all her dignit