"I am glad to hear you are letter. You wished us not to meet again, and as it is easier for me to go than you, I leave here in an hour. You will forgive me for having caused you so much pain. Good-bye.
A.B."
She put the paper in an envelope, and took it down to the Count.
"I have written a note to Mr. Anerley, explaining our going away so abruptly. Will you please send it to him?"
"I will take it to him myself," said the Count, and he took it.
A few minutes afterwards, when the Count returned, she was seated at the window, looking out with vague absent eyes on the great undulations of the black-green forest, on the soft sunlight that lay upon the hills along the horizon, and on the little nook of Schönstein with the brown houses, the white church, and the large inn. She started slightly as he entered. He held another envelope in his hand.
"I have brought a reply," he said, "but a man does not write much with his left hand, in bed."
On a corner of the sheet of paper she had sent, there were written these words, "I thank you heartily. God bless you!—W.A." And her only thought as she read them was, "Not even in England—not even in England."
Grete appeared, blushing in her elaborate finery. Her violet bodice was resplendent, with its broad velvet collar embroidered with gold; her snow-white sleeves were full-blown and crimp; and her hair was braided, and hung down in two long tails from underneath the imposing black head-dress, with its ornamentation of gold beads. Grete had manufactured another of those embroidered miracles, which she was now carrying in her trunk to Aenchen Baumer. It was with a little sob of half-hysteric delight that she drove out of the stone courtyard, and realised the stupendous fact that Hermann Löwe was to accompany them to the Feldberg.
Mrs. Christmas, studying the strange expression of her adopted daughter's face, thought she was becoming remarkably like the Annie Napier whom she knew long ago.