"Which you will all need in this case, dear Felix. Helen is a very peculiar character, hard to understand. I confess I have not ventured yet to tell her of our plan. I wished first to see what impression you would produce on her heart. You have the finest opportunity here to show yourself in the most favorable light; there is not even a rival to fear. We live very retired, and I shall take good care that our retirement is interrupted as rarely as possible while you are staying with us." "Pardon me, dear aunt," said Felix, "if I differ with you on that point. I should really have to pay forfeit if I had to be afraid of a comparison with the young men of my class here in the country. On the contrary, I am very anxious to measure myself with these goslings! Every one of them whom I defeat is a step nearer to my goal, if it is really so far off. No! Ask as much company as you choose. Make Helen's presence and mine the pretext for giving little dinners, suppers, teas. etc.; and then sum it all up in a great ball, on which occasion our engagement can be proclaimed, and thus produce a sensation such as these people have not often experienced." "You are bold, dear Felix," said the baroness, who liked this method all the less that it was rather expensive. "What else would have been the use of my wearing a sword by my side so long?" replied Felix, gallantly kissing her hand. While the baroness and Felix were disposing so coolly of Helen and her fate, she and her father had had a conversation which oddly crossed the cunning plans of the baroness, and the idea of the victorious race which the young ex-lieutenant so naïvely expected to win. The old baron loved his beautiful daughter with all the love of which his good heart was capable; he loved her all the better, as he had always had great doubts about the justice of the law which excluded the young girl from the entailed property. Besides, he felt the indifference with which his wife had so far treated their daughter, although he had been too weak to take measures to counteract it, and especially to make an end to the exile in Hamburg. He had, likewise, consented to the proposed match only because Anna Maria had persuaded him that thus the inequality in the fortunes of the two children could best be remedied, since Helen, as Felix's wife, would obtain possession of the whole estate, if Malte should die without heirs. But here also he had stipulated that Helen must give her free consent, and in return he had pledged himself to leave the whole management of this delicate affair in the hands of his wife, and especially not to divulge the project before the time.