The baroness saw this almost at the first glance, when she met her daughter in the reception-room of the Institute at Hamburg. There was nothing to be said against the carriage of the young lady, who advanced towards her mother neither too hastily nor too slowly, who kissed her hand, and then, as if awaiting further orders, remained there calmly and composedly. But the big eyes looked so firm and so proud, and the words fell so well measured from her lips, that the mother felt she could no longer count upon childlike submission or loving obedience from this daughter, who looked to her almost a stranger. The great project which she bore in her head quite ready, suddenly appeared to her in a very uncertain light, and the first words she said to her husband were: "I think, dear Grenwitz, we shall have to be very cautious with our plan about that match. You would oblige me by leaving the matter entirely in my hands. An awkward beginning, nay, even a hint at the wrong time, might spoil it all,"--a suggestion which the old gentleman was very willing to obey, as even his strong faith in Anna Maria's infallibility had not been able to quiet all his scruples about the proposed match. The baroness saw that if Felix should not find favor in Helen's eyes--and such a case was at least possible--nothing could be done by intimidation or violence, and that gentle measures were not merely the safest but the only way. This is what made her so kind, after her fashion, so exceedingly kind to her daughter; and in order that the others might not find out her purpose, or in order to keep in practice, she was kind to them also. It was strange, however, that this sunshine of favor seemed to warm her least for whom it was specially intended; Helen did not change her calm, measured manner, her coldly polite formality, in the least; the boarding school, which the baroness had always praised to the skies, had evidently produced in Helen a model young lady. And yet this heart, apparently so cold and inaccessible, was well able to feel warmly. When she took leave of her friends and her beloved governess she had wept burning tears, though she dried them instantly when her mother remarked on them,--she showed her father many little attentions not easily suggested by mere politeness, and she could give money to a poor child and then take him by the hand and speak kindly to him. Her friends, of whom, however, she had only few, never found cause to complain of heartlessness in her, and the letters she wrote from Grenwitz proved that she was neither cold nor reserved with those she loved. Thus she wrote, among others, to Mary Burton, a pretty young English girl, whom she loved best of all her friends, and who had had a great influence over her: