ered. I could not answer him. With an obvious effort, he continued:

"I will come at once to the object of my visit here to-night. That case which was wanting to your experience

"

Again he stopped, and pressed his hand to his forehead as though he felt his brow must burst with the surrender of a secret now for the first time wrenched from the deepest roots of a life.

"That case," he repeated, "which you failed to find, I offer it to you. I would place it in your hands, for I feel my end approach. If the knowledge of evil can serve the cause of good, be it yours to dispose of. Spare me the pain of being myself your guide along that thorny path over which the bleeding traces of a tired pilgrim will suffice to point the way. These papers-take them; read them."

He rose, placed a packet of papers in my hand and his address, bowed, and hurriedly turned to the door. "One question!" I exclaimed. "The countess?"

Suddenly his whole stature rose its full height. He turned round and stood before me erect, solemn, almost awful. He lifted his hand, and looking upward with a strange expression on his countenance, said, "Yonder, at the right hand of her husband."

F 2

CHAPTER III.

THE SECRET IN MY HANDS AT LAST.

NOTHING but my own unquiet footsteps broke the profound silence of the night. I was alone. For more than an hour I continued pacing up and down the room in strong excitement, weighing in my hand that pregnant packet which I dared not open till I had composed the trouble of those emotions to which my unexpected interview with the count had given rise.

By degrees I grew calmer; but it was nearly morning before I sat down, with something of judicial solemnity, to open those "sessions of silent thought" from which Edmond Count R― had invoked the verdict on his life.

Letters in various handwritings (chiefly a woman's), memoranda, pages of a journal, made up the contents of the packet which the count had placed in my hands. I read them in the order in which I found them; but a due regard for the patience and convenience of other readers (no doubt less interested than myself) compels me to reduce the substance of these documents to a summary, reserving only the permission to extract in extenso some of the original papers which appear to be specially important.

CHAPTER IV.

EARLY DAYS.

THE peasant sees it, for a moment, from the river, when he floats his raft down the rapid waters of the Weidnitz; for there the river winds, and the trees are thick. The reaper sees it all day long, envying, perhaps, the shadow and the cool of it, when the sun is hot upon the red corn-lands beyond the woody upland slopes. It is an old chateau that has seen many changes, and suffered few. A massive pile of gray stone, with tall copper roofs, built four-square about a quiet court. There the grass has a will of its own, and pushes its way, under trying circumstances, between the chinks in the much-flawed pavement. There, too, the sun-dial is always conspicuous, but the sun seldom. The south front is flanked by a square, flat garden (Italian style), with long, straight walks, whereto you descend from a broad terrace by a flight of stone stairs. The garden leads to a bowling-alley. In the middle of the garden is a fish-tank, full of old red fish and old black water. Beyond this is the park. It is not like your English parks, but rather a sort of slovenly meadow, which rambles astray in all directions, and finally loses itself in the great woodland all round. There you may hunt the roebuck, the red deer even, and the wild boar. Such a place for shooting and for fishing never was.

For

about all this the river puts its arm, lovingly and quietly, like an old friend.

This is the first scene which shapes itself before my mind's eye as I read. It is the chateau of L-. And here, at ease with his family, dwells Arthur Count R, a wealthy, high-bred, honorable, kindhearted, perhaps somewhat weak-minded nobleman. Count Arthur married late in life. It was a love marriage, however, and, what is yet more rare, a happy one. Three children were born of this marriage. Edmond, the first-born, who for some time remained. the only child, for he was four years old when his brother Felix was born. To Felix succeeded, two years afterward, a sister, Marie. Marie was sickly from birth, and died at three years old. The more complete had been the happiness of the countess, more violent was her grief for the loss of her only daughter. Heaven, however, accorded her a compensation for this loss. The earliest and tenderest friend of the countess (the companion of her childhood) had been wedded young, very young, to the spendthrift Prince C, in Bohemia. She died in the first year of her marriage, giving birth to a daughter; and her last request to her husband was that this infant might be confided to the care of her friend, the wife of Count Arthur R, in Silesia.

the

This sacrifice was not made without reluctance by the widower. But the prince, whatever may have been his faults, had been attached to his wife, and was deeply affected by her death. He felt himself pledged to fulfill his promise to the princess on her death-bed. Besides, how was it possible for a young man, devoted

to pleasure, to look after the infant thus left on his hands? So little Juliet was conducted to L, and henceforth became a member of the count's family. The prince soon forgot his double loss in a life of debauchery at Vienna. In a few years he ran through his fortune; and one morning, finding himself with empty pockets, after an enforced settlement with his creditors, he accepted active service in the Imperial army, and fell at Aspern at the head of his regiment.

Count Arthur, as guardian of the orphan, secured to Juliet all that could be saved from the wreck of her father's fortune; and the little girl, who had no recollection of any other home, grew up at L

with

the two boys, regarded by the members of the count's family as one of themselves, and accustomed to regard them in return with all the affection of a sister and daughter.

Juliet was a charming child, essentially loveable, because essentially loving. All the conditions of her adopted home were of a nature to develop the great feature of her character-trustfulness.

The education of Edmond had been completed at home under paternal care.

I have no personal experience of your English public schools; but I have always regarded them as the great reservoirs of the English character. What seems to me the main defect of our German system of education is that it is too exclusively confined to intellectual development. The motive power of man does not exist in the intellectual, but in the moral qualities. The quantula sapientia that governs mankind has been a subject of continual wonder to the contemplative