"One afternoon I met her in the garden. It was a hot, sunny day; she wore a white dress, and a broad-brimmed straw hat was hanging on her fair round arm. The baron was out riding, the first time for a long while, and the aunt still asleep. I had long determined to speak to the girl at the first opportunity, and to open her eyes. I gathered courage, therefore, as she was about to pass by me with a 'Good-day, Mother Claus, how are you?' and said: 'Many thanks. Miss Marie, have you a moment's time? I should like to say a few words to you.'--'What is the matter?' she said, and as she looked into my face, which was probably quite sad and sober, she cried: 'For heaven's sake, I hope nothing bad has happened?'--'No, Miss Marie,' I said, 'but that might easily come about if you do not look about you; and I should be heartily sorry for that, for you are so young and good, and you look so chaste and good, and as innocent as an angel.'--'What do you mean?' said the poor child, and turned deep red. 'Come this way, Miss Marie,' I said, and drew her into the beech avenue, where we could not be seen from the castle; 'I will tell you everything I have on my conscience. I am an old woman and you are a young girl who knows little how the world goes, and how things go here in Grenwitz!' And then I described to her the life at the castle as it had been before she came, and what a wild, sad man Harald was, and how he was as false and as cruel as a tiger. She turned to me with glowing cheeks, never once raising her long silken eyelashes to look at me with her beautiful blue eyes, and without interrupting me once; then she said, in a low voice: 'I thank you, Mrs. Claus--but what you tell me I have long known.' I was thunderstruck. 'You knew it, and yet you accompanied the old lady here? You know it, and you remain here. You know it, and you are not afraid to stay alone with the baron for hours and days? Oh, child, child! what must I think of you?'--'Think nothing that is bad of me,' she said, placing her hand on my shoulder, 'and think a little better of the baron. He will never again be as wild and as bad as he has been.'--'How do you know, Miss Marie?' 'Because he has promised me.'--'And you think he will keep his promise?'--'Oh, certainly.'--'Why?'--'Because he loves me!'--'Oh, child! child!' I cried, 'for heaven's sake, it is high time: flee, or you are surely lost. Poor child! to believe his vows! He shoots the horse that he likes no longer, and he breaks the vow that becomes a burden to him. What he has promised you is an old song; he sings it as a bird whistles his air, without thinking what he does. What he has promised you he has promised a hundred others, who perhaps were no better than he is.'--'Stop,' said Miss Marie, vehemently, 'I cannot and must not listen to you any longer.' And then she added, smiling: 'You will soon see, my good woman, how you have wronged my Harald--how you have wronged Baron Harald.'--'Your Harald?' I said,