is an ideal nest for a young woman of good taste and serious habits.

"Mamma, why must I learn to read?" asks Litzi after a while.

"So as to be a wise girl," replies Elsa, absently.

"Mamma, can the dear God read too?"

"The dear God can do everything that He wishes," says Elsa, with difficulty restraining her laughter.

"Everything?" asks the little one, with great, surprised eyes. "Could He make Fido into a cow?"

Fido, a white bull-dog with pointed black ears and a black spot on his shoulder, raises his upper lip and shows his teeth pleasantly as a sign that he, clever dog that he is, notices when he is spoken of.

"The dear God does not wish to do foolish things," says Elsa, very seriously.

"But if He wanted to?"

The door opens. Fido rises from the streak of sunlight in which he has been lying. "Papa!" cries Litzi, and a young man, blond, with unusually attractive dark eyes, seizes her under the shoulders, and raising her to him he says: "Litzi, Litzi, you are a dear little mouse, but a great big goose. Accustom yourself to the conditional."

"What is conditional?"

"A form of expression which leads one to much useless conjecture."

"But, Erwin!" laughingly admonishes Elsa.

"Perhaps you did not wholly understand me, Litzi?" he asks, drolly staring at the child.

She shakes her head, and says somewhat vexedly, "You are laughing at me, papa."

"Only a very little bit, so that you may get used to it, you pretty little scamp, you," says he, tenderly pinching her cheeks, "and now you may go to Mlle. Angelique, and ask her to put a clean dress and a pretty sash on you, for Uncle Felix is coming to dinner. Can you find the way?"

He has placed her on the ground, and led her to the door, then looks after her until, calling "Angelique! Angelique!" she is met by a pretty French bonne.

"And how is your Highness?" he now turns to his wife, who holds out both hands to him.

"How long it is since one has seen you to-day," says she.

"Has 'one' missed me a little?"

"Do not ask such foolish questions!"

"Thanks! I was very busy or else I should have burdened you with my presence sooner," says he, gayly. "And now give me your keys, so that I can put away your money."

"Oh, my quarterly allowance. How much is it?"

He hands her a little bundle of bank-notes.

"Count!"

"I do not understand, it is different every time. You always give me more than is due me," replies she, shaking her head.

"Leave me this innocent pleasure. You are always in debt," says he, while he locks the notes in a drawer of her writing-desk.

Erwin never would acknowledge the equal rights of woman with regard to the cares of life. He was pleased that Elsa, who read the most abstract treatises on political economy, did not understand an iota of business. He had purposely left her in this darkness, and she did not fight against it. He paid her the interest of her property, insisted that she should spend it exclusively upon her poor and her own fancies, and she never asked what he did with the capital.

"May I write here?" he asks over his shoulder, sitting down at her writing-desk then, without waiting for an answer. "A lady's writing-desk without invitations and charitable circulars. The inspector has become confused about that farm business of your little protégé in Johannesthal." He writes quickly.

"The inspector is good for nothing," grumbles Elsa. "That is to say, he is newly married."

Erwin defends his bailiff.

"There, that is done. You can tell your little friend that it is all arranged. Hm! Elsa! Do you think that I would have been much more practical during our honeymoon than my inspector?"

"Ah, you," says Elsa, who evidently does not understand how her husband can compare himself to his overseer, Cibulka. He has laid aside his pen and now pushes his chair lazily up to hers.

"You will make marks in my carpet, you careless man," says she.

"Do not cry," he says, consolingly. "I will buy you a new one, as the banker said to his daughter when her husband died."

"I congratulate you on your fine comparison," says she, kissing his hair lightly. "Now I must dress for dinner."

"Already? Am I to be sentenced to read the paper?"

It was a little more than five years ago that Erwin Garzin had come to his estate of Steinbach adjoining the beautiful Lanzberg Traunberg in order to arrange his business after the death of his father. Elsa, with whom he had as boy played many a trick, he had found a grown girl. At that time nineteen years old, her mind, matured by pain, was far in advance of her years, her body far behind. She had the slender, undeveloped form of a child too quickly grown, and carried her head always bent forward, like a young tree over which a cold storm has passed, and was always sad and depressed. At times, to be sure, she smiled suddenly like a true child, but only for a moment, and her eyes were almost always moist. She spoke little and had a hollow, almost too deep voice. And yet the first time that Erwin heard this hollow voice his heart beat strangely, and that night he lay awake and was angry at the sweet song of a nightingale which disturbed him in his efforts to remember that hollow voice.

It was spring-time then, a mixture of showers and rainbows, flowers heavy with dew, bright foliage and mild air. Erwin fell hopelessly in love with the pale daughter of old Mr. Lanzberg. She, however, avoided him, not with that pretty maidenly reserve behind which the coquetry of the future woman usually lurks, but with the shy despondency of a sick owl dreading the light. When he had at length accustomed her to his society he was still miles from his aim. She did not think of what most young girls do. She was wholly absorbed in consoling her bowed father, in pitying her unfortunate brother, at that time dwelling in a far distant land. Her heart was full, longed for no other feeling, suspected none, and yet slowly her whole being warmed; something like a cure was effected in her, and the day came when she laid her small hand firmly and confidingly in Erwin's and for the first time he whisperingly called her his betrothed.

But he had not yet won. Soon she expressed her scruples at dragging the shadow which made her so sad under his roof, then at leaving her father. When they proved to her that nothing could so help the bowed man as the consolation of seeing at least one of his children happy, the wedding day was at length appointed. A strange turn suddenly seized her when Erwin one day asked her in what part of Vienna she would prefer to live.

"In Vienna?" cried she. "We are to live in the city?" Whereupon he replied: "My treasure, you know that I am not a rich man, and the rents of Steinbach only just suffice for the support of a very economical couple. Therefore I, and you with me are dependent upon my career. But I like to work. I have fine connections, and the times are favorable to ambitious people. You will yet be the wife of an Excellency, Elsa!"

From her pale face it could be read that she did not see the slightest pleasure in being the wife of a governor, ambassador, or minister. Her hand grew limp and cold in his, she evaded his caresses, and every time that evening that his glance met hers, her eyes were filled with tears. Her exaggerated aversion to the world disquieted him, without