composer felt the double rejection which he had experienced to-day to be a deadly insult. One could hear how he struggled with his pride, even now, for every word, and it must have been a powerful motive which brought him here, notwithstanding all, and by such a path! His wife had clearly no share in it, as he stood opposite her in gloomy, unbending defiance. As a boy, Reinhold Almbach could never bear to humble himself, not even when he knew himself to be wrong, and during the latter years he had too often gained the dangerous experience that any error he committed was covered by the right of genius, which may permit itself to do almost anything.

While these last words were being spoken, they had entered the garden below. In the middle of it Ella stopped.

"Signor Rinaldo appears to have mistaken his way, this time," said she, certainly in German, but in the same tone as before. "Yonder in S----, lies the villa where Signora Biancona resides, and it can only be a mistake which landed his boat at our terrace."

The reproach hit him; Almbach's defiant look sank, and for a few moments he was at a loss for a reply.

"I do not seek Signora Biancona this time," replied he at last, "and that I am not permitted to seek Eleonore Almbach, she showed me sufficiently this morning. It was not my intention to offend you again by sight of me; it would have been spared you, had you acceded to my written request. I came to see my child alone."

With a rapid step the young wife reached the bedroom door, and placed herself before it. She did not speak a word, but in the evident internal emotion there lay such an energetic protest, that Reinhold immediately understood her intention.

"Will you not allow me to embrace my son?" asked he, angrily.

"No," was the firm reply, given with the most positive determination.

Reinhold was about to fly into a passion; she saw how he clenched his fist, but he forced himself to be calm.

"I see that I did your late father injustice," said he, bitterly; "I took it to be his work that all news of my boy was withheld from me. Did you read my first letter yourself, and leave it unanswered?"

"Yes."

"And returned the second unopened?"

"Yes."

Reinhold's face changed from red to white; mutely he gazed at his wife, from whose lips he had never heard an expression of her own will, much less any opposition--whom he only knew as humbly and silently obedient, and who now dared to refuse with such decision to grant him what he considered his own right.

"Take care, Ella," said he, firmly, "whatever may have taken place between us, whatever you may have to reproach me with, this tone of scorn I will not endure; and above all, I will not tolerate being refused the sight of my boy. I will see my child."

The demand sounded almost threatening. The young wife's pale cheeks began to colour slightly, but she did not move from her place.

"Your child?" asked she, slowly; "the boy belongs to me, me only; you lost every right to him when you left him with me."

"That may still be questioned," cried Almbach, beginning to wax furious. "Are we judicially separated? Has the law given Reinhold to you? He remains my son, whatever there may be between you and me; and if you refuse me my rights as a father any longer, I shall know how to enforce them."

The threat was not without effect, but it quite failed in its purpose. Ella drew herself up, and exclaimed with quivering lips, but with great energy--

"You will not do that; you have not the conscience to do it, and if you had, there is, thank God, another power to which I can appeal, and which is, perhaps, not quite so indifferent to you as the family bonds and duties which you broke so lightly. The world would learn that Signor Rinaldo, after he had forsaken his wife and child for years, and had not enquired after them, now dares to threaten his wife with the same laws which he scorned and spurned with his feet, because she does not choose that her boy should call him father; and all your fame, and all the adoration yonder, would not protect you from the merited contempt."

"Eleonore!"

It was a cry of rage which escaped his lips as she uttered the last word, and his eyes flashed in terrific wildness down upon the delicate form standing before him. Once Reinhold's passion was excited to its utmost, it knew no limits, and all around him were wont to tremble. Even Beatrice, although so little his inferior in violence, dared not at such moments irritate him farther; she knew where the line was drawn, and once this was reached she always yielded. Here it was different; the first time for years he was stranded by another's will; before the eyes which met his own, so clear and large, his defiance succumbed altogether--he was silent.

"You see yourself that it would be worse than mockery were you to resort to law," said his wife, more calmly.

Reinhold leaned heavily against the seat near which he stood. Was it shame or anger made the hand tremble which buried itself in the cushion?

"I see that I laboured under a serious mistake when I believed I knew the woman who was called my wife for two years," replied he, in a singularly compressed tone. "Had you only once shown yourself to be the same Eleonore whom I meet now, much would have remained undone. Who taught you this language?"

"The hour in which you forsook me," replied she, with annihilating coldness, as she turned away.

"That hour seems to have given you much more that was once foreign to you--the pleasure of revenge, for example."

"And the pride, which I never knew, towards you," completed Ella. "I had first to be crushed to the ground, but it awoke and showed me what I owed to myself and my child, the only thing you had left to me, the only thing that kept me up; for his sake I began again to learn, to work, when the time for learning lay far behind me; for his sake I roused myself above the prejudices and trammels of my education, and gave my life a new direction when my parents' death made me free. I must be everything now to the child, as it was everything to me, and I had sworn that my child should never be ashamed of its mother, as his father was ashamed of her, because externally she was inferior to other women."

Almbach's brow was dyed a deeper red at the last words--

"It was not my intention to dispute Reinhold with you," said he hastily. "I only wished to see him in your presence if it must be. You know only too well what a weapon the child is in your hands, and you use it mercilessly against me, Ella." He came nearer to her and for the first time there was something like a tone of entreaty in his voice. "Ella, it is our child. This link at least extends out of the past into the present, the only one between us which is not broken. Will you break it now? Shall the chance which brought us together really remain merely chance? It lies in your hands to make it a turning point of fate which may perhaps be for the good of us both."

The hint was plain enough, but the young wife drew back, and on her countenance again that expression, full of meaning--that "No!" spoke to all eternity.

"For us both?" repeated she. "Then you really believe I could find happiness by your side, after all you have done to me? Truly Reinhold, you must be much impressed with your own value, or my worthlessness, that you venture to offer it to me. Certainly, when could you have learned respect for me? It was not possible in my parents' house. I was brought up in obedience and submission, and I brought both to my