Monkey, paroquets, combs, and ribbons, all were ready to receive Lieutenant Frederic. His mother had sent, at great expense, for the famous Scudéry’s latest novel. By her order it had been richly bound, with silvergilt clasps, and placed, with the bottles of perfume and boxes of patches, upon the elegant toilet-table, with gilded feet, and richly inlaid, with which she had furnished her dear son Frederic’s future sitting-room. When she had thus fulfilled the careful round of petty maternal cares which had for a moment caused her to forget her hate, she remembered that she had now nothing else to do but to injure Schumacker and Ethel. General Levin’s departure left them at her mercy. So many things had happened recently at Munkholm of which she could learn but little! Who was the serf, vassal, or peasant, who, if she was to credit Frederic’s very ambiguous and embarrassed phrases, had won the love of the ex-chancellor’s daughter? What were Baron Ordener’s relations with the prisoners of Munkholm? What were the incomprehensible motives for Ordener’s most peculiar absence at a time when both kingdoms were given over to preparations for his marriage to that Ulrica d’Ahlefeld whom he seemed to disdain? And lastly, what had occurred between Levin de Knud and Schumacker? The countess was lost in conjectures. She finally resolved, in order to clear up all these mysteries, to risk a descent upon Munkholm,--a step to which she was counselled both by her curiosity as a woman and her interests as an enemy. One evening, as Ethel, alone in the donjon garden, had just written, for the sixth time, with a diamond ring, some mysterious monogram upon the dusty window in the postern gate through which her Ordener had disappeared, it opened. The young girl started. It was the first time that this gate had been opened since it closed upon him. A tall, pale woman, dressed in white, stood before her. She gave Ethel a smile as sweet as poisoned honey, and behind her mask of quiet friendliness there lurked an expression of hatred, spite, and involuntary admiration. Ethel looked at her in astonishment, almost fear. Except her old nurse, who had died in her arms, this was the first woman she had seen within the gloomy walls of Munkholm. “My child,” gently asked the stranger, “are you the daughter of the prisoner of Munkholm?” Ethel could not help turning away her head; she instinctively shrank from the stranger, and she felt as if there were venom in the breath which uttered such sweet tones. She answered: “I am Ethel Schumacker. My father tells me that in my cradle I was called Countess of Tönsberg and Princess of Wollin.” “Your father tells you so!” exclaimed the tall woman, with a sneer which she at once repressed. Then she added: “You have had many misfortunes!” “Misfortune received me, at my birth, in its cruel arms,” replied the youthful captive; “my noble father says that it will never leave me while I live.”