"Yes, Adela; at least I promise to be your friend for life," he replied. She took from her finger a ring set with a sapphire. "Take this ring in remembrance of today," she said. "It was my mother's, and I have always worn it, first on my chain and then on my finger. Take it." "But, Adela," Walter said, delighted, and yet hesitating to accept so strange a gift, "will it not be missed from your finger?" "Who is there to miss it? No one cares enough for me to notice whether I wear it or not," she said, with some bitterness. He took the ring, and as he did so detained her hand in his for some moments, as they walked down the steps and across the church-yard. "I thank you, Adela; the ring will be most precious indeed to me," he said, in a low, earnest voice. "But I do not need it to make me remember this evening." She smiled, and at the gate of the church-yard they took leave of each other. The chapel lay about half-way between Rollin and Eichhof, so that each could reach home before dark. Adela felt very happy this evening, and, as there was no one to whom she could speak of her happiness, she carried a basket of sugar into the stable and fed her various black and brown pets. "Some living creatures shall be happy with me, at all events," she said, stroking the necks of the horses as they took their sugar from her hand. No one shared Walter's happiness. Indeed, he was not clear as to whether the emotion that filled his heart at the thought of Adela was precisely happiness. But he thought much of her all through the evening, and was even more quiet and dreamy in his mood than usual. CHAPTER IX. CLOUDY WEATHER AT EICHHOF. Several months had passed since Count Eichhof's death. The Countess had withdrawn to her dower-house, about half a league distant, whence, however, she drove over at least once every week to complain of the miserable condition of her present abode. She witnessed, with a resignation made apparent amid many sighs and tears, the alterations effected by her son and her daughter-in-law in Eichhof. She found it perfectly right and proper that Bernhard should be master there, but that Thea--"that insignificant little girl," as she called her--should have usurped the position so lately her own, was more than she could understand or endure. It required all Thea's gentleness and amiability to enable her to endure her mother-in-law's visits, and her task was made none the easier by Bernhard's passing almost the entire day out-of-doors. The Freiherr von Hohenstein, who had found the son quite as accommodating a creditor as the father had been before him, said that Bernhard was "launching out tremendously," which was his way of designating the restless energy with which Bernhard had entered upon the duties of his new position.