To the boy's astonishment his big questioner suddenly let go his arm, and, leaning against the house wall, covered his face with his hands, shivered as though from an ague fit. When the man took his hands from before his face, the child saw that his eyes were full of tears. The boy wondered why so many grown-up people were so foolish. 'Quick, boy! take me to her!' he cried. 'No; that is just what I am not to do,' was the reply. 'I am to tell her where the Duke will meet her to-morrow morning early.' 'To-morrow morning! A million leaden moments! a century to pass! No! Boy, take me to her! I am the Duke; take me to her, I order you.' 'No; you may be the Duke, but she has given me her commands, and they mean more to me than yours.' The boy threw up his head proudly. Even in his passionate impatience Serenissimus was struck by the boy's manner, amused by this small gentleman. 'Preux Chevalier!' he said laughing; then bowing gravely to the little muffled figure, 'you are perfectly correct, and I stand reproved; but at least do me the honour to carry this ring to the lady, and tell her that I await either her or her sovereign commands.' The boy took the ring and vanished into the blackness of the side street. Eberhard Ludwig remained looking after him into the gloom. A bitter thought came to him of the superiority of this child of the back streets over the Erbprinz of Wirtemberg--that poor, sickly, excitable boy, whose disappointing personality was a source of constant irritation and humiliation to his father. Eberhard Ludwig loved personal vitality, and that vigorous manliness which he himself possessed, and which he saw daily in the sons of his poorest subjects; and he suffered intensely when he was brought into contact with his puny, unwholesome son. The Duchess's passionate spoiling and injudicious love made matters worse; the boy's health was in nowise benefited thereby, and it but served to accentuate the fact that his father had little else save impatient pity to bestow upon his disappointing offspring. This was in Eberhard Ludwig's mind as his eyes rested absently upon the street opening whither had vanished the erect little form of Joseph Suess--'preux chevalier,' as the Duke had dubbed him. The summer storm had passed, leaving a delicious freshness in the air and a fragrance which penetrated from the gardens to the Duke. Eberhard Ludwig stood waiting near the entrance to the narrow street or gangway, where the overhanging roofs dripped large splashing drops upon the unpaved earth below. Now that realisation was in all probability so near, his wild desire for Wilhelmine seemed to have passed; a curious anxiety had taken its place. How strange, the Duke reflected, that loss or absence should enhance the value of the beloved. He tried to conjure up his agony of longing for his mistress. What mad rapture, could he have clasped her at the moment of tremendous desire which had been his half an hour earlier in the castle garden! Are we