"But that's just the same thing!" she exclaimed; "and I cannot change your opinion of me all in a moment. Perhaps you are partly right; but one thing I can and will promise you, and that is, that I will always in future be honest and frank with you, and never again play such idiotic pranks as on that day at Kissingen. I will not pretend to be better than I am, and neither will I pretend to be worse than I am, and you shall always have the right to lecture me and tell me what you think of me. In return you must promise always to be my friend. If ever I vex you again, tell me so, and scold me, but do not instantly run away from me as though I were too contemptible a thing to turn back and look at. Will you promise me this?" She looked up at him with eager anxiety, though with a childlike confidence, and held out her hand, which he grasped cordially. "Yes, Adela," he said, "I will be a true and faithful friend to you. I cannot tell you how glad I am to find my dear little playfellow once more. I know now that she may sometimes hide herself, but she will not vanish utterly. Be sure I shall remember this." Adela gave him so sunny a smile that he smiled too, and then, passing quickly to other things, she asked after his mother and his brothers. "You are alone too, Walter," she said. "You are very unlike your brothers, and your mother cannot be much to you. She sees you more in the future than in the present." "Why, Adela!" said Walter, almost startled, "what puts such ideas into your head?" "I keep my eyes open," she said, and then grew suddenly very grave. "I only mean that your father is a terrible loss to you, and that Eichhof will be much changed. Thea will come, and I am glad of it, although she is something of a prig, like all the Rosens. I love her dearly for all that, and she will be a good sister to you." Walter gazed sadly before him. "Come," said Adela, laying her hand upon his arm, "do not look so troubled; you know I am just like a sister too." He pressed her hand; they rose, and she noticed that his eyes sought the door of the chapel. "Shall we not go in again together?" she asked, gently, and they ascended the steps and entered the building. Adela knelt down beside the sarcophagus, and hid her face for some time upon the wreaths that she had placed there. Walter looked down at her, and it seemed to him that they were in the presence of his father, who smiled upon them. When Adela rose from her knees she looked him gravely and earnestly in the face, and then left the chapel with him in silence. They went out into the calm autumn evening; the skies were naming with crimson and gold, for the sun was just sinking behind the line of forest that bounded the horizon, and the bell in the little village church began to ring for vespers. "How solemn!" said Adela, pausing before the chapel. Suddenly she turned to Walter again: "From this moment we are friends for life, are we not?"