"Do not ask me to repeat everything in detail. I cannot do it. My heart is too full. The remembrance of my lost pet does not leave me for a moment, and I should like nothing better than to lay down my pen and to cry to my heart's content. Tell me, Mary, is it really our fate, as we have so often told each other in sad hours, to go through life unsatisfied, without joy, without happiness, without the hope that the future at least may bring us the fulfilment of our wishes? Is fortune ever to appear to us only as a fata morgana--charming in its beauty and treacherously fleeting? Or is it ever to present itself only in a shape which, however great the inner value may be, offends our delicacy--our prejudices, if you choose to call them so? Your lot, to be sure, it seems, is to be different. In the same circles to which you belong by birth and training, you have found the man who would have been dear to your heart even if your judgment should not have approved of the choice of your heart. A man, a hero, a lord! Happy, thrice happy you are to have found one to whom you have to look up, proud as you are! Smile with your aristocratic curve of the lip upon--your friend at the boarding-school!
"It is true, I am very comfortable at this boarding-school. They treat me, not as a pupil, but as a guest, and I am sincerely grateful to the principal, a Miss Bear, for her goodness, and the delicate consideration with which she treats me, as if she knew all. Perhaps she does know all. Such events, in families like ours, are not apt to remain unknown. Have I not myself learnt much about my own engagement only several weeks afterwards, and not from my father, with whom I have corresponded all the time, and who has even come to see me several times from Grenwitz (my mother, who I am told is here in Grunwald, has broken off all intercourse with me), but from a young lady, a Miss Sophie Roban, a former boarder here, whose acquaintance I have made, and with whom I have even formed a kind of friendship. She is engaged to our physician at Grenwitz, who has recently settled here, and thus her news seems to be reliable. She told me what had occurred after my departure from Grenwitz, and what papa had carefully kept from me; that the young man, of whom I wrote you already last summer, our tutor, Doctor Stein, has become my knight and my avenger, inasmuch, at least, as he has fought a duel with Felix, and given my great cousin a lesson which he will probably not forget very soon, as I learn from the same authority. I cannot tell you how strangely this news has affected me. At first--I may confess to you--my pride was offended that my name should be coupled in the world with the name of a man like Mr. Stein; that a stranger, a hireling, should have assumed responsibilities for me, as if he were a relative, and my equal in rank. But then I thought of the old saying, 'that if the people were silent the stones would speak;' I remembered that a brother could not have behaved more brotherly, nor a knight more chivalrously toward me than this man had done from the first moment. I recalled, above all, that this man was my Bruno's dearest friend, and I forgot my pride, and felt, not without wondering at myself, that I could be grateful to this man for his great kindness and affection without feeling, as I generally do, that this gratitude weighs upon me as a burden. Nay, even more, I felt the desire to see him, who was abroad, once more, in order to thank him in person, and when I saw him to-day, quite unexpectedly, pass by the window at which I was sitting, I felt--you will laugh at me, Mary--I felt that as I returned his bow the blood rushed into my face. When he had gone by I could not help following him with my eye, and then I leaned back in the window and wept bitter tears over the memory of Bruno, which the appearance of Stein had suddenly and powerfully revived in my mind. I wish I could speak to him undisturbed.
"But I must break off here. I hear Miss Roban, who comes to play with me, and Miss Bear, in the next room."
Helen rose to meet the two ladies, who had entered the room upon her entrez! Sophie Roban passed Miss Bear and embraced Helen, with an affectionate haste which contrasted somewhat with the calm and dignified carriage of the young aristocrat.
"I have really longed to see you, Helen! Why have you not come to see me since the other night, when you promised to call again? Miss Mal has not put her veto upon it?"
"Point du tout," replied Miss Bear, pushing her glasses on the top of her head, in order to look more freely at the large, friendly blue eyes of her favorite. "You know, little Sophie, that Helen is perfectly free to dispose of her time. But that was not what I came for, dear Helen! Here is a letter for you; one of your servants brought it; I suppose it is from your father?"
Helen took the letter with a slight acknowledgment, cast a glance at the direction, and said: "Yes, indeed; from my father!" and put it on her portefeuille, which she had closed when the two ladies entered.
"I will not interrupt you any longer," said Miss Bear. "Little Sophie comes to carry you home with her. Shall I send a servant for you?--and when?"
"You are surely coming, Helen?" said Sophie, who had taken a seat on the stool before the piano, and was looking at a collection of music. "I have received some beautiful new songs. A splendid one by Schumann; we must look at it together."
"With all my heart," replied Helen. "But I cannot well stay long, because I must finish a letter for England to-night, so that I can send it off to-morrow morning. I am much obliged to you. Miss Bear, for the servant; but I shall be back before dark."