After a rapid ride of about half an hour, we reached the home of our hosts, near the centre of the town and not far from the lake. The family Ney received us in the most cordial manner; nevertheless their dignified bearing very profoundly impressed even my proud father. The ladies in particular were so much like princesses in disguise that my father at once transformed himself into the inimitable gallant Paladin of chivalry you have known him to be in Rome, London, and Vienna. Father Ney betrayed, at the first glance, the profound thinker accustomed to serious work, but who by no means lacked the mien of agreeable self-possession. Judging from the fact that he had been six-and-twenty years in the service of the Freeland commonwealth, he must be at least fifty years old, but he looks to be scarcely forty. The younger of the sons, Emanuel, technician by calling, is a complete duplicate of David, though a little darker and more robust than the latter, who, as you know, is no weakling. The mother, Ellen by name, an American by birth, who--thanks, evidently, to David's reports of me--received me with a truly motherly welcome, must be, judging from the age of her children, about forty-five, but her youthful freshness gives her the appearance rather of a sister than a mother of her children. She is brilliantly beautiful, but is rendered specially charming by the goodness and nobility of mind impressed upon her features. She introduced to us three girls between eighteen and twenty years of age as her daughters, of whom only one--Bertha--resembled her and her sons. This one, a young copy of the mother, at once embarrassed me by the indescribable charm of her presence. She was so little like the others--Leonora and Clementina--that I could not refrain from remarking upon it to David. 'These two are not blood-relations to us, but pupil daughters of my mother; what that means I will tell you by-and-by,' was his answer. As, despite the comfort of Freeland cars, we were naturally somewhat exhausted by our six days' railway journey, after a short conversation with our hosts we begged to be allowed to retire to our rooms. David acted as our guide. After leaving the spacious garden-terrace upon which we had hitherto lingered, we passed through a simple but tastefully arranged drawing-room and a stately dining-hall which communicated, as I noticed, with a large room used as a library on the right, and with two smaller rooms on the left. These latter rooms were, David told us, his parents' workrooms. We then came into a richly decorated vestibule, from which stairs led above to the bedrooms. Here David took us into two bedrooms with a common anteroom.