When, on the evening of the same day, Leuthold returned from town, he heard that Ernestine could not see him,--she was not well, and had retired to her room. Slowly and cautiously he sought her study, and there attempted to find what and how much his ward had accomplished during the day. To his astonishment, he found nothing. He slipped into the laboratory, and there lay everything just as it had been left the day before. Nothing had been touched. What did it mean? It was the first day for years that had been passed by Ernestine in idleness. Then, creeping along the corridors with the stealthy step of a cat, he sought Frau Willmers. She, too, was just about going to bed, and looked very sleepy when Leuthold, fixing a searching glance upon her, asked, "What has Fräulein von Hartwich been doing to-day?" Frau Willmers yawned: she needed an instant for reflection. "Fräulein von Hartwich has been quite unwell to-day," she replied. "Indeed! what was the matter with her?" "Why, just what is always the matter, more or less. Heart-beat, faintness, headache. Is it any wonder, considering the way she is always at work? She could hardly hold up her head to-day----" "Has any one been here?" "Not a soul: who could----" "No letters?" "Two for you, Herr Professor, and one for Fräulein von Hartwich from the schoolmaster." "What did he want?" "He asked for some linen-cambric rags for his weak eyes. She took him some." "She herself? Why?" "She was tired because she could not study, and she wanted to see Herr Leonhardt's eyes. She thought she might learn something from them." "Very well,--that will do. Good-night, Frau Willmers." "Good-night, Herr Professor," said the cunning housekeeper, hastening to tell Ernestine how slyly she had managed matters and contrived to pay due honour to truth by mixing up some of it with her falsehoods. Ernestine sat in an easy-chair, her eyes fixed upon the flame of the lamp. A book lay open in her lap,--"Andersen's Fairy Tales." She could not smile at what Frau Willmers told her. There was something in it that filled her with uneasiness. For the first time since she had lived with her uncle, she felt that she was a prisoner, watched and guarded as such. She was obliged to conceal, as if it were a crime, the fact that she had become acquainted with a true, noble human being. She had to account on the plea of interest in science for visiting a poor suffering man. The lie disgraced her, and the necessity that had prompted it was a galling chain! All this she felt to-day for the first time. One day had aroused within her the longing for independence!--the greatest misfortune that could have befallen her unsuspecting uncle, but not the only one that this day was to bring him. When he went to his room, he found there the letters of which Frau Willmers had told him. The first that he took up he opened instantly. It was from his daughter Gretchen, and ran thus: "My dearest Father: