Bertha seated herself at the piano, and played an accompaniment to this and several other pieces. Her husband, who was beating time beside her, remarked that their young friend’s bad humor had a singularly favorable effect on his talent. “I assure you, Dornthal, you never played so well as you have this evening.” “Perhaps so,” replied Clement with a thoughtful air. “Yes, I think you are right.” It was really the truth. Music was the veiled, but eloquent, language of his soul. The very feelings he so successfully repressed, the words that no temptation or impulse could induce his lips to betray, made the chords vibrate beneath his bow, and gave their tones an inexpressible accent it was impossible to hear without emotion and surprise. When, at the end of a fortnight, Clement reappeared at Rosenheim, all exterior traces of the excessive agitation he had given himself up to had disappeared. He resumed his usual manner towards Fleurange. No one would have dreamed—and she less than any one else—that between the past and present he found the difference of life and death. She little imagined that the new and strange sympathy that existed between them revealed to him the secret of all her thoughts and struggles. She also, apparently, had become the same as before. Her time was actively employed, the care she had of little Frida and that she lavished on her uncle, the _ménage_, sewing, exercise, and study filled up the days so completely that it was very seldom she could have been found inactive or pensive. Hilda, her favorite cousin, though likewise struck for a moment by the hesitation with which she replied to her questions about Count George, almost ceased attaching any importance to this slight incident when she observed the apparent calmness with which Fleurange fulfilled the duties of her active life. Only one clearly read her heart and understood the passing expression of weariness and sorrow that now and then overshadowed her brow for an instant, and saddened her eye. Only one noticed her absence when the family assembled in the evening, and followed her in thought to the little bench on the bank of the river, where he imagined she had gone to weep awhile, alone and unrestrained. All she suffered he had to endure himself, and he lived thus united to her, and yet every day still more widely separated from her.