I opposed this determination of Count Leopold; but my husband did not second me. He saw, that this arrangement was greatly to his advantage; and I had already found on several occasions, that he was not quite so incapable of attention to his own interest, as I had formerly supposed. It by no means occurred to him, that Count Venosta proposed to do too much for us; on the contrary, he lost no time in giving solidity to my uncle’s kind declarations, and only appeared to lament, that the deed of gift had not included his whole property. The waving shades of the vale of Munster and the proud castle on the Rhine seemed to have acquired double charms in his eyes, since Leopold declared his intention of retaining them for himself; and their value was increased beyond bounds on Ethelbert’s being given to understand, that my uncle did not intend to leave them to us even at his death, but destined them for a bequest to that beloved woman, whom he could not resolve to give up all hopes of recovering. Count Venosta (that honest open-hearted man, who withheld no sentiment from those, whom he looked on as his children) was amusing himself one day with the youthful Minna, whom the recollection of her mother rendered inexpressibly dear to him. Ethelbert remarked, as if by accident, that the child already had acquired the sedate appearance of the station, which she was hereafter to occupy. —“What station?” asked my uncle with surprise. Minna, who had been accustomed to hear her future lot pronounced by my husband almost daily, answered with her accustomed candour—“What other shelter can a poor orphan expect to find, except a cloister?”— —“What?” exclaimed Count Leopold, while he prest her still closer to his bosom, “you poor? you an orphan, while Venosta lives? No, no, my child; I know too well, what I owe to the memory of your excellent mother! Let who will forsake you, never shall you be forsaken by me!”— Count Ethelbert had never been partial to the Damsel of Mayenfield; from that day he began to hate her. Minna too on _her_ side seemed to harbour towards my husband a secret aversion; whose expressions she would have been unable to restrain, had he not also inspired her with sentiments of the most unbounded terror.