"Antonia," he said quietly, "I should be unworthy to wear a sword if I gave you any answer but this; let everything be forgotten and forgiven that belongs to the past, no other remembrance will abide with me but that of friendship, and if you need a friend, you will find one in me." And he let go her hand after pressing it gently. Was it the tone of his voice, was it the quiet pressure of his hand, that convinced her quick womanly perceptions that she had lost his love for ever? She stood motionless, the passionate tears left her eyes, a flash of hatred gleamed in her look, but she hastily concealed it beneath her downcast eyelids. With a quiet movement she drew down her veil, and said in a voice that retained no traces of its former emotion: "Farewell; may you be happy!" She turned to the door. Stielow accompanied her silently and gravely through the ante-room to the outer door of his apartments, which a servant hurried forwards to open. She went out with hasty footsteps. The young man returned and sank into an arm-chair as if exhausted. "Was it real, or was it acting?" he whispered thoughtfully. "No matter," he cried after a short consideration, "it does not become me to judge her--may she find happiness!" And quickly springing up he said, whilst his face cleared up: "This was the last cloud that threatened to veil my star." He rang for his servant, made a hasty toilette, and drove in his cab to the house of the Countess Frankenstein. In the afternoon the most varied life filled the wide alleys of the Prater. Upon the broad turf beneath the trees of this enormous park some of the cavalry regiments recalled to Vienna were still encamped, and the different scenes of camp life were picturesquely displayed. There stood the horses picketed, as if on actual service, neighing and whinnying with impatience, here lay a circle of soldiers around a smouldering fire, on which, in the field kettle, their meal was cooking; booths were erected in which food and drink, the Vienna sausage, and camp beer, were offered for sale; and the Viennese streamed in and out in countless numbers. Now that the real war was over with its fears and anguish, they liked to gaze here on the last picture of it, which only offered to the eye its romantic charm, and not its dreadful earnest. But the groups of lookers-on were the thickest around an open space girt in by tall trees, where the brown sons of Hungary were displaying their fantastic national dance--the Czardas. A man played, upon an old violin, one of those peculiar melodies, half wailing, half wild dithyrambic movements, which even when thus executed sounds upon the ear with a strange mysterious charm; the others pursued a peculiar dance, with its strange pantomimic evolutions, sometimes jingling their spurs together, sometimes stamping on the ground with their feet, sometimes twisting the body into strange but always graceful attitudes.