here and do not drive a charge of shot through him! Do you know who that was, George? The villain who will one day be lord of a hundred manors which by right are all mine, whose ancestors were my ancestors' vassals, and whose scoundrelly father came to me to tell me in my own apartment that he desired to marry his son according to his rank, and that he trusted we could come to some satisfactory arrangement. I clutched him by his accursed throat, and would have strangled him if others had not come between us. The thing has been gnawing at my heart incessantly, ever since I heard that the villain was going about the neighborhood here. And now you know why Constance and I are upon so unfortunate a footing. Heaven knows what fancies she is nursing; and it drives me mad to see that her thoughts still cling to the miscreant who has offered her the grossest insult that man can offer to woman; who has tarnished my ancestral escutcheon, and should fight me to the death, but for----" He checked himself suddenly, and walked silently by my side, gnawing his lip. Not noticing the irregularities of the wretched road, he stumbled once or twice, and this stumbling, combined with the expression of his face, in which the wrinkles deepened to furrows whenever he was under strong emotion, gave him the appearance of a broken old man consumed by impotent anger. Never before had he appeared so much in need of help, so worthy of compassion, and never before had I pitied him so, or so yearned to assist him. At the same time I thought that so favorable an opportunity to clear up the misunderstanding that evidently existed between father and daughter in reference to their relations with the prince, would not easily again occur. So I plucked up a heart and asked: "Does Fräulein Constance know how much she has been insulted?" "How? What do you mean?" he asked in return. I told him what I had been speaking of with Constance that morning; how little suspicion she seemed to have of the outrage that had been offered her; that on the contrary she had expressly told me that she had been betrothed to the prince, that their predetermined union had been prevented by Herr von Zehren's fault alone, and that she had renounced freely and utterly all thought of the possibility of their marriage. But the audacity with which he had attempted to approach her, the correspondence which had taken place between them, I kept to myself, feeling that this would only awaken anew the wrath of the Wild Zehren, and render him deaf to all reason. But it was all to no purpose. He listened to me with every sign of impatience, and when I paused for breath in my eagerness, he broke out: