mantilla, and now to gather a flower on the other side of the ditch, or to give her his hand in climbing up the steep shore. Bruno performed every duty with a gentle earnestness which often provoked Baron Felix to mockery; but the others, who knew the boy, and the unbridled passions in his heart, were unspeakably touched. His whole being seemed to be changed when Helen's eye rested on him. He became gentle and kind, ready to help and to serve; a word from her, a mere sign of her long, dark eyelashes, and he became quiet after a sudden burst of temper. He rarely, however, showed his violence now, except against Felix, for whom he entertained a hatred and a contempt which he hardly attempted to conceal. He always had a scornful word for him in readiness, and the many little exposures to which his unmeasured vanity made him liable, found in Bruno a pitiless censor. He became all the more annoying to Felix as his youth prevented the usual weapons from being used against him, while a skilful blow from above was apt to be parried with still greater skill. Felix himself felt this to a certain degree, and if the boy appeared to him insignificant, he still proved very troublesome. Wherever Helen appeared, there was Bruno also; and if she ever had stayed behind during a walk, and Felix was just on the point of speaking to her of his love, Bruno was sure to join them, as if by agreement, and Felix, who knew nothing at all of botany and mineralogy, had to leave the two to their scientific researches. How would he have wondered if he could have found out that these "researches," as he called them, were broken off the moment he was out of sight, and that Bruno, tearing the flower in his hand to pieces, cried out: "Look, Helen, that is the way you will tear my heart, if you ever love this man Felix!"--"The old story, Bruno?"--"Yes, the old story, and I will tell it as long as there is a breath in my bosom. Do you think I do not know what it means when aunty and Felix put their heads together, and look from time to time stealthily at you? Oh, I have sharp eyes, and good ears, too! Yesterday, as I passed them, the fine gentleman said: She'll come to her senses! She--that was you; and come to your senses meant: She will forget her self-respect and marry a wretched, vain peacock like myself"--"But how can you imagine such things, Bruno?"--"Well, I think that is not so difficult. And you imagine them too, I know, or why do you look so often straight before you, in deep thought, and then suddenly at Felix or Oswald, as if you were comparing the two with each other? Yes, just compare them! Then you will see the difference between a man and--an ape!"--"Are you very fond of Mr. Stein, Bruno? Is he always so sad and silent?"--"Oh, no! He can be as wild as a colt; I don't know what is the matter with him now, or rather I know it, but----" --"But?"--"But I must not tell--yes, I think I can tell you; for you are not like the others. I always feel as