"What a pity," he murmured; "I should have liked to cast anchor here for some time, and might have got on with the old gentleman. He seemed to me rather queer, and sometimes lets go the rudder, but it is not a very uncommon thing, and perhaps it will all pass over by to-morrow. I could soon learn his ways. He drank at least three bottles, and his eyes were bloodshot and wild before he flew out in that way. I am afraid it is rather a family failing; our old sailor grandfather--but it is not the worst of faults, and we Schmidts cannot be expected to have the aristocratic manners of the Werbens. Ferdinanda is unquestionably very handsome; the sculptor was right: 'the prettiest girl in the town!' And yet, the noble carriage, the inexpressible grace of movement, the beautiful look of the eyes, the ever-changing and always sweet expression of the features--she cannot be compared with Elsa, and indeed who could? Then she has not spoken three words. Is there nothing behind that beautiful forehead? Is that gloomy silence only a cloak whose 'classic folds' she has borrowed perhaps of her master to conceal her insignificance? I had pictured to myself something quite different when first I saw her. There was some life about her when she cut short that introduction at the railway station, and hurried me away. Certainly since then I have discovered why it was painful for her. Capulets and Montagues, only divided by a garden wall. What was that?" The moon had risen higher; the shrubbery walk at the bottom of the garden, down which Reinhold could see some distance from the window where he stood, was in parts quite light between the bushes. Across one of the light spots a female form had just glided, only to disappear, and did not pass into the light again. But she must do so if she belonged to the house; the path went round a grass-plot in its immediate vicinity, and lay in the full light of the moon, and by leaning out a very little he could easily see over it. But why should she belong to the house? On one side of the garden was a small outhouse in which there was a lighted window. The figure might have come from thence. "And at any rate," thought Reinhold, "it is no business of yours, and you can go to bed."