But the crowning thought of both of them, as they turned their back upon Schönstein, was—"I shall soon see Annie Brunel." As they passed through the village, Margarethe Halm came out from under her father’s door, and the driver stopped the carriage. "You will see the young English lady when you return home?" said Grete to Will, with a blush on her pretty brown face. "And if I do?" "Will you give her this little parcel? it is my work." With that she slipped the parcel into his hand. At this moment Hans Halm came forward and bade both the gentlemen good-bye; and in that moment Grete, unnoticed, timidly handed up to Hermann, who was seated beside the driver, another little parcel. There was a slight quivering of the lips as she did so; and then she turned away, and went up to her own room, and threw herself, sobbing, on the bed in quite a passion of grief, not daring to look after the carriage as it rolled away into the forest. Hermann stealthily opened the packet, and found therein a little gilt _Gebetbuch_, with coloured pictures of the saints throughout it, and a little inscription in front in Grete’s handwriting. Franz Gersbach, having been over at Donaueschingen, had secretly bought the tiny prayer-book for her; and he knew all the time for whom it was intended. "She is a good girl," said Hermann, "and a good girl makes a good wife. I will go once more to England, but never after that—no, not if I had seven hundred Counts for my master." They stopped a day at Strasbourg, and there they found a lot of English newspapers of recent date. "Look what the people are saying of Miss Brunel!" said Will, utterly confounded by the tone in which the journals spoke of ’Rosalind.’ The Count took up paper after paper, and eagerly scanned such notices of the pieces as he could find. "They are not very enthusiastic," said he; "but they are really most complimentary——" "Complimentary? Yes; but only to Miss Brunel, not to ’Rosalind.’ Don’t you see in every one of them how the writer, wishing to speak as highly as possible of her, scarcely knows how to throw cold water on the play? And yet cold water is thrown abundantly. The unanimity of these critiques simply says this—that Miss Brunel’s ’Rosalind’ is a failure." "How will she bear it?" said the Count. "She will bear it with the self-possession and sweetness that always cling to her."