Then he seated himself with old Lohmeier and his daughter at their simple but excellent supper, and again he admired Margaret's adroitness and attention to her household duties, and the cheerful comfort she shed around her. And he thought to himself how pretty she would look in the rich old farmhouse at Blechow, and how the elder Deyke would rejoice at having such a housekeeper and daughter-in-law. What Margaret thought was her own secret, but she looked supremely happy as she served her father and his guest, and performed all the duties of an attentive housewife, with the skill of an experienced hostess and the grace of a lovely girl. Thus quiet joy and hopeful happiness prevailed throughout the good burgher house in Langensalza. The candidate Behrmann visited many of the sick and wounded, and unweariedly spoke eloquent and impressive words of comfort, and he refused all thanks with humility. He advised and ordered in the hospitals; and praises of the pious, gifted, and exemplary young clergyman resounded from every lip. CHAPTER XXI. RECONCILIATION. Countess Frankenstein sat in the reception-room of her house in the Herrengasse, in Vienna. Nothing had altered in this salon; the prodigious events and the mighty storms that had shaken the power of the House of Hapsburg to its very foundations could not have been suspected from the aspect of this room when unoccupied, so complete was its stamp of aristocratic immutability and perfect repose. There was the same old furniture which had already served several generations, now looking down from their faintly gleaming frames of tarnished gilding upon the doings of their children and grand-children; there was the high, wide chimney-piece, the flames from which had been reflected in the bright, youthful eyes of those who long ago had become staid grandmothers; there was the same clock with its groups of shepherds and shepherdesses which had marked the moment of birth and the moment of death of many a member of the family, and with equal calmness had added second to second in hours of joy or hours of sorrow. Amongst all these objects, lifeless indeed but full of memories, and accustomed to look calmly on the happiness or sadness of generations passed away, sat the living beings of the present, deeply moved and distressed by the terrible and unexpected blow which had fallen on the House of Hapsburg and on Austria.