"It will perhaps be so in the future!" replied Atkins dryly. "Such weakness overpowers a man like Henry but once. He should have held to his American traditions; then the heir and future chief of the house of Alison & Co. would have received no refusal. It is not well, this mixture with German blood; you yourself very well see that now, Miss Jane, and Henry evidently has had enough of your German romances to last a lifetime. But his is not a nature to burden itself with an unhappy, love for any long time, and I do not doubt that within a year's time we shall hear of his marriage with one of our home heiresses." "Would to God it might be so!" sighed Jane from the deepest depths of her heart, as she rose and stayed her arm against the wall. For some moments, Atkins stood near her in silence. "Shall we continue our walk?" he asked at length. "This old castle is doubtless very interesting, but there is a draught about the romantic, mediæval haunt. I think we had best return to the sheltered valley." "I shall remain!" declared Jane with her usual positiveness. "But I will not allow you to expose yourself longer to this 'romantic draught.' You will of course direct your walk to M. and we shall meet upon our return." The hint was plain enough, and Atkins very readily accepted it. He thought it inexpressibly dull up here, and gladly availed himself of any excuse to withdraw. "I have an idea that I shall have to return to America alone," he muttered to himself, as he took a by-path leading directly down into the valley. "And besides, I am to have the extraordinary pleasure of sending Mr. Forest's whole fortune across the ocean. The fortune Henry Alison made the object of all his energies and calculations, and which is now to fall into the lap of this German professor who was stupid enough to care nothing at all about it, and who would have married unhesitatingly upon his professor's salary! And he will have a brilliant career in the world--there is no doubt of that. They are now lauding him as the future poet, and there must be something in the uproar his verses cause. If a million stands behind them, and a wife like Jane sits near him--all this will urge him on more surely and speedily to the wished for goal. Our deceased Mrs. Forest would have been triumphant; but I'd like to know what Mr. Forest would say at seeing his riches exclusively in German hands and subserving German interests. I believe he would"--here Mr. Atkins bethought himself, and concluded with this emphatic ejaculation--"I believe he would say amen to it!"