Thus some time passed, and at last Frau von Rosen was allowed to leave her room. When she spent an hour for the first time in an arbour in the garden, Herr von Hohenstein and his daughter came to wish their old friend joy in her restoration to health, and to inform her at the same time that Herr von Hohenstein had purchased a country-house with a little land, and that they were to occupy it the ensuing week. The house was in the vicinity of one of the larger cities of their native province, and Adela was enthusiastic in her praises of its lovely situation, while her head was filled with plans for gardens of roses, asparagus-beds, dove-cotes, and chicken-yards. Herr von Hohenstein, who had entirely recovered his health, although he was greatly changed and found his memory often defective, so that he was obliged to turn to Adela for aid, agreed to everything, and spoke of employing his leisure in the quiet of the country, if his strength admitted of it, in collecting his varied experience on the subject of the breeding of horses, and in publishing it for the use and enlightenment of posterity. Adela had taken a pencil out of her pocket, and was just about to draw a ground-plan of her future home on a leaf of her note-book for Alma, when a shadow fell upon her paper, and a familiar voice that had not fallen upon her ears for a long time bade 'good-morning' to the little circle in the arbour. Adela started up and confronted Walter Eichhof. Perhaps each was at first inclined, so unexpected was this meeting, to run away; but Adela was imprisoned in the arbour, and Dr. Nordstedt's broad shoulders appeared just behind Walter. As there was no way of avoiding each other, they each had recourse to the same line of conduct; Walter devoted himself to the Rosens, and Adela found inexhaustible matter for conversation with Dr. Nordstedt in his establishment and his methods of treatment, in which she expressed the greatest interest. Both Walter and Adela, however, took occasion to scan each other furtively, and at times replied rather vaguely to remarks addressed to them, from an anxiety on the part of each to hear what the other was saying. At last Dr. Nordstedt expressed a fear lest so much conversation around her might fatigue Frau von Rosen, and proposed that she should be left for a while with the Baron von Hohenstein, while he conducted Walter and the young ladies through the garden, and the establishment in which Fräulein von Hohenstein expressed such an interest.