hitherto spared me such marks of affection."

The young man was too apathetic to feel all the bitter meaning of these words. He took them as a reproach.

"Hitherto? Well, yes, etiquette was rather severely maintained in your father's house. During the whole two months of our engagement, I had not once the happiness of seeing you alone. The continual presence of your father or your brothers laid a restraint upon us which, now we are together quietly for the first time, may well be laid aside."

Eugénie retreated still farther.

"Well then, now that we are quietly alone together, I declare that such tender demonstrations, made just to satisfy appearances, and in which the heart has no share, are positively distasteful to me. I release you once for all from any such obligations."

The surprise in Arthur's face became a little more marked now; so far, however, he was not really roused.

"You seem to be in rather a peculiar humour to-day. Appearances! Heart! Really, Eugénie, I should not have expected to find such romantic illusions in you of all people."

An expression of deep bitterness passed over her features.

"I took leave of all illusions in life when I promised you my hand. You and your father were bent on uniting your name with that of Windeg, which is old and noble. You thought, by doing so, you would obtain those honours and that society from which you had hitherto been shut out. Well, you have gained your end. For the future, I must sign myself Eugénie Berkow!"

She laid a most contemptuous stress on the last word. Arthur had risen; he seemed to understand at last that this was something more than a bride's caprice, called forth, possibly, by his negligence during the journey.

"You certainly do not seem to like the name much. Until to-day, I had no idea that, in taking it, you had yielded to constraint from your family, but I begin to think"----

"No one has constrained me!" interrupted Eugénie. "No one has even persuaded me. What I did, I did voluntarily, with full consciousness of what I was undertaking. It was hard enough for them at home that I should be sacrificed for their sakes."

Arthur shrugged his shoulders; it was plain from the expression of his face that the conversation was beginning to weary him.

"I really do not understand how you can speak in such a tragic tone about a simple family arrangement. If my father, in making it, had other objects in view, I suppose the Baron's motives were not of a very romantic nature either, only he, probably, had still more cogent reasons for approving of a marriage by which he certainly was not the loser."

Eugénie started up, her eyes flashed, and a hasty movement of her arm threw the fragrant bouquet to the ground.

"And you dare to say that to me? After what occurred before your suit was accepted? I thought, at least, you would blush for it, if indeed you are still capable of blushing."

The young man's languid, half-closed eyes opened suddenly, large and full; there came a gleam into them, like a sudden spark shooting up from beneath dead ashes, but his voice retained its quiet matter-of-fact tone.

"First of all, I must beg of you to be a little clearer. I feel myself quite unable to make out these enigmatic speeches."

Eugénie crossed her arms with a rapid movement; her bosom heaved tumultuously.

"You know, as well as I do, that we were on the brink of ruin. Whose the fault may have been, I cannot and will not decide. It is easy to throw stones at one who is struggling with adversity. When a man has inherited estates overburdened with debt, when he has to maintain the repute of an old name, to keep up a position in society, and to assure his children's future, he cannot amass money as you do in your industrial world. You have always had gold to throw away, your every wish has been forestalled, every whim gratified. I have tasted all the misery of an existence, which, wearing of necessity the outward mask of splendour, was every day, every hour, drawing nearer inevitable ruin. Perhaps we might yet have escaped, if we had not fallen precisely into Berkow's nets. He fairly forced his help on us at first, forced it upon us until he had got everything into his hands, until we, pursued, entrapped, despairing, literally knew not which way to turn. Then he came and claimed my hand for his son as the sole price of deliverance. Rather than offer me up, my father would have braved the worst, but I would not see him sacrificed, his whole career destroyed, I would not have my brother's future blighted, our name dishonoured, so I gave my consent. Not one of my family knew what it cost me!--but, if I sold myself, I can answer for it to God, and to my conscience. You, who lent yourself to be the tool of your father's base designs, have no right to reproach me; my motives were at least nobler than yours!"

She paused, overcome by her emotion. Her husband still stood motionless before her; there was the same slight pallor on his face as had been visible at noon, when the danger was just overpast, but his eyes were veiled once more.

"I regret that you did not make these disclosures to me before our marriage," said he, slowly.

"Why?"

"Because you would not then have incurred the humiliation of signing yourself Eugénie Berkow."

The young wife was silent.

"I had not the slightest suspicion of these--these manipulations on my father's part," continued Arthur, "for my habit is in no way to interfere with his business concerns. He said to me one day, that if I chose to sue for the hand of Baron Windeg's daughter, my proposal would be accepted. I agreed to the plan, and I was formally presented to you, our betrothal following a few days later. That is my share of the business."

Eugénie turned away.

"I would rather have had a plain avowal of your complicity than this fable," she said coldly.

Again the man's eyes opened wide, and again that strange light gleamed in them, ready to kindle into flame, but ever anew quenched by the ashes.

"It seems I stand so high in my wife's estimation, that my words do not even find credence with her?" said he, this time with a decided touch of bitterness.

Eugénie's fair face expressed the most sovereign contempt, as she turned it towards her husband, and she answered slightingly:

"You really must excuse me, Arthur, for not meeting you in a spirit of perfect confidence. Until the day you entered our house for the first time on an errand I understood but too well--until then, I had known you only through the city gossip, and it"----

"Drew no flattering portrait of me? That I can well believe. Will you not have the goodness to tell me what people were pleased to say of me in town?"

She raised her large eyes and looked him steadily in the face.

"People said that Arthur Berkow only made so princely a display, only threw away thousands upon thousands, in order to buy the favour of the young nobility and the right to associate with them, hoping that his own humble birth would thus be forgotten. People said that in the wild, dissipated doings of a certain set, he was the wildest, the most dissipated of all. As to some of the other reports, it would ill become me as a woman to pronounce upon them."

Arthur's hand still rested on the back of the armchair on which he was leaning; during the last few seconds it had buried itself involuntarily deeper and deeper in the silken cushions.

"And you naturally do not