Frau von Walden and I could not help smiling at her. Still there was no smiling at my story, though both agreed that, viewed in the light of unexaggerated common sense, it was most improbable that there was any tragedy mixed up with the disappearance of the young man we had heard of at Gruenstein. "And indeed why we should speak of his 'disappearance' I don't know," said Frau von Walden. "He did not write to send the order he had spoken of--that was all. No doubt he is very happy at his own home. When you are back in England, my dear, you must try to find him out--perhaps by means of the cup. And then when Nora sees him, and finds he is not at all like the 'ghost,' it will make her the more ready to think it was really only some _very strange_, I must admit, kind of optical delusion." "But Nora has never heard the Gruenstein story, and is not to hear it," said Ottilia. "And England is a wide place, small as it is in one sense," I said. "Still, if I _did_ come across the young man, I half think I would tell Nora the whole, and by showing her how _my_ imagination had dressed it up, I think I could perhaps lessen the effect on her of what she thought she saw. It would prove to her better than anything, the tricks that fancy may play us. "And in the meantime, if you take my advice, you will allude to it as little as possible," said practical Ottilia. "Don't _seem_ to avoid the subject, but manage to do so in reality." "Shall you order the tea-service?" asked Frau von Walden. "I hardly think so. I am out of conceit of it somehow," I said. "And it might remind Nora of the blue paper parcel. I think I shall give the cup and saucer to my sister." And on my return to England I did so. * * * * * Two years later. A very different scene from quaint old Kronberg, or still more from the dreary "Katze" at Silberbach. We are in England now, though not at our own home. We are staying, my children and I--two older girls than little Nora, and Nora herself, though hardly now to be described as "little"--with my sister. Reggie is there too, but naturally not much heard of, for it is the summer holidays, and the weather is delightful. It is August again--a typical August afternoon--though a trifle too hot perhaps for some people. "This time two years ago, mamma," said Margaret, my eldest daughter, "you were in Germany with Nora and Reggie. What a long summer that seemed! It is so much nicer to be all together." "I should like to go to Kronberg and all those queer places," said Lily, the second girl; "especially to the place where Nora saw the ghost." "I am quite sure you would not wish to _stay_ there," I replied. "It is curious that you should speak of it just now. I was thinking of it this morning. It was just two years yesterday that it happened." We were sitting at afternoon tea on the lawn outside the drawing-room window--my sister, her husband, Margaret, Lily, and I. Nora was with the schoolroom party inside.