se of
being, and sometimes indulging in a little playful destruction by the
way. The girl had heard a voice in the dark singing, and ever since
then she had dreamed of the singer; but it never entered her mind to
confide to the baroness her strange fancies. An undisciplined
imagination, securely shielded from all outward disturbing causes,
will do much with a voice in the dark,--a great deal more than such a
woman as the baroness might imagine.

I do not know enough about these blue-eyed German girls to say whether
or not Hedwig had ever before thought of her unknown singer as an
unknown lover. But the emotions of the previous night had shaken her
nerves a little, and had she been older than she was she would have
known that she loved her singer, in a distant and maidenly fashion, as
soon as she heard the baroness speak of him as having been her
property. And now she was angry with herself, and ashamed of feeling
any interest in a man who was evidently tied to another woman by some
intrigue she could not comprehend. Her coming to visit the baroness
had been as unpremeditated as it was unexpected that morning, and she
bitterly repented it; but being of good blood and heart, she acted as
boldly as she could, and showed no little tact in making Nino sing,
and thus cutting short a painful conversation. Only when the baroness
tried to caress her and stroke her hand she shrank away, and the blood
mantled up to her cheeks. Add to all this the womanly indignation she
felt at having been so long deceived by Nino, and you will see that
she was in a very vacillating frame of mind.

The baroness was a subtle woman, reckless and diplomatic by turns, and
she was not blind to the sudden repulse she met with from Hedwig,
unspoken though it was. But she merely withdrew her hand, and sat
thinking over the situation. What she thought, no one knows; or at
least, we can only guess it from what she did afterwards. As for me, I
have never blamed her at all, for she is the kind of woman I should
have loved. In the meantime Nino carolled out one love song after
another. He saw, however, that the situation was untenable, and after
a while he rose to go. Strange to say, although the baroness had asked
Nino to breakfast and the hour was now at hand, she made no effort to
retain him. But she gave him her hand, and said many flattering and
pleasing things, which, however, neither flattered nor pleased him. As
for Hedwig, she bent her head a little