"From your very loving
"Mamma."
She addressed half a dozen envelopes with the address under which she had received other clandestine letters. It was--.
"Fräulein Minna Huth,
"Münsterberg,
"Poste restante."
Then she put all together into a big envelope, and rang for old Minna, to whose secret care she entrusted the missive.
The sewing-woman, a withered hag with a large parchment-coloured face in which her toothless jaws incessantly champed, rejoiced in the new intrigue. She clung to her beautiful young mistress with the faithfulness of a pampered dog, and her only ambition was to be useful to her. Paulchen's scrawls would be as safe in her hand as formerly the outpourings of amorous souls.
The danger of the little boy's return was thus averted; but Felicitas was no happier. She longed so intensely to see Leo, for once, alone. She had proved that she understood how to sound the depths of his soul. But it was clear as daylight that he avoided being tête-à-tête with her. He always chose with punctilious exactitude the hours for his visits when Ulrich was to be found in the yard, and turned invariably towards the stables instead of dismounting before the portico.
"Is this the reward for the sacrifice I have made in becoming reconciled with him?" she asked herself; but she did not take into consideration that the self-sacrifice only existed in Ulrich's imagination. In her heart's estrangement, she almost thought of resorting again to the old flirtations for distraction. "Enjoy yourself, deaden yourself with the old pleasures," she said to herself, "so that he will see how things are with you, and approach you again."