On the evening of that day Alma stood at the open window of her room, looking out into the starry June night. The leaves of the trees whispered gently in the evening breeze, and the garden lay silent and dark below her, while beyond the gardens and court-yard that surrounded the Nordstedt mansion there was the glimmer of distant gas-lights, and the street-noises fell upon her ear like a muffled hum. Alma was so grateful that she longed to be happy and glad, and yet precisely at this time, when she was relieved from her weight of care and could breathe freely, she felt doubly lonely in the strange great city. She seemed to herself to be upon a lonely island in the midst of a roaring ocean. As she stood thus looking out, she thought of that winter night in Eichhof when she had stood at the window gazing thus. Lothar's image, which her recent care had banished to the background of her thoughts, arose vividly before her, and she was conscious of a painful yearning for her home. She clasped her hands against the window-frame, and leaned her head upon them. The air was sultry; she had loosened her fair hair, and it fell down about her shoulders, as she remained thus lost in thoughts of the past. Suddenly the door was opened, and a woman with a lighted candle entered the room. It was the nurse to whose care Frau von Rosen was specially intrusted. "Good gracious, Fräulein dear, you are in pitch darkness!" she exclaimed, putting the candle on the table, "and with the window open too! Have you closed the door, that your mother may not feel the draught?" "Indeed I have, Marianne," Alma replied, half turning round. "My mother is asleep, and I came here to get a little fresh air." "Yes, yes, you ought to have more fresh air, Fräulein dear; the Herr Doctor always says you ought to walk in the garden every day. The Herr Doctor is not at all pleased to see you grow so pale here. He looks at you,--yes, just as he always does at people with whom he is not satisfied, and for whom he would like to prescribe. No offence, Fräulein, but he does; such a sad look, and yet so kind. Good gracious! I know the look well enough. And he has, perhaps, a particular reason for it in your case." Alma was only lending half an ear to the woman's chatter, and it was more out of kindness than from interest that she asked, "Indeed? How so?" Marianne put on an air of mystery. "Ah, you see, 'tis a long story. You look like somebody," she replied. "Indeed?" "Somebody who is dead; of course it was a woman," Marianne chattered on. "She had braids just like yours. Now your hair is down, I can see that she had the very same. And she had blue eyes, too, and was so like you in some way, I cannot exactly tell how; but as soon as you came you reminded me of her, and our doctor saw it too,--I knew that in a moment, for I know him well." "Well, and who was this other?" Alma asked, with more interest.