cultivating and preparing the instrument that was one day to be my own, to be played on as others play on the strings of a harp or violin. But clever and accomplished as Fräulein Josse was, and much as I enjoyed my lessons with her, the hours spent with Fräulein Lavater were worth even more, for her knowledge had a still wider range, her judgment was more calm and clear, being utterly unbiased by any personal considerations. She possessed a special gift for calming the tumult--a tumult of thought unsuspected by everyone else--which my lively imagination sometimes set up in my brain. As she was the only person who could sympathise with my flights of fancy, perhaps the only one who did not consider absolutely culpable and reprehensible the tendency to indulge in them, it was only natural that she should be the sole confidante of my dreams and aspirations. With her too I could give vent to my natural liveliness, to the perpetual flow of high spirits, so sadly out of place in the atmosphere of the sick-room. My youthful health and strength drew down on me all sorts of uncomplimentary epithets from some of the elder members of the family, to whom, more even than to the invalids, my liveliness must have been a trial; Whirlwind, Flibbertigibbet, Will-o’-the-wisp, these were a few of the names showered on me by Uncle Max, and more or less acquiesced in by the rest. It must have been the sensation of exuberant, irrepressible vitality within me which made me one day exclaim--“Mamma, I feel as if I could carry away a mountain!” Alas! I have sometimes thought since that my heedless words must have been overheard by Fate!