The President had dropped the remark in his note that the absence of a hostess in the castle would be somewhat embarrassing for the young lady in their company, but as it was not so easily to be remedied he would apologize for him in advance. The Count had dispatched a messenger forthwith to his neighbor, von Strummin, with the urgent request that he should come with his wife and daughter to Golmberg, prepared to spend the night there. The Strummins were glad to render this neighborly service, and Madame and Miss von Strummin had already received Else in the hall, and conducted her to the room set apart for her, adjoining their own rooms. The President rubbed his thin white hands contentedly before the fire in his own comfortable room, and murmured, as John put the baggage in order, "Delightful; very delightful! I think this will fully reconcile the young lady to her misfortune and restore her grouchy father to a sociable frame of mind." Else was fully reconciled. To be released from the close, jolting prison of a landau and introduced into a brightly lighted castle in the midst of the forest, where servants stood with torches at the portal; to be most heartily welcomed in the ancient hall, with its strangely ornamented columns, by two ladies who approached from among the arms and armor with which the walls and columns were hung and surrounded, and conducted into the snuggest of all the apartments; to enjoy a flickering open fire, brightly burning wax tapers before a tall mirror in a rich rococo frame, velvet carpets of a marvelous design which was repeated in every possible variation upon the heavy hangings before the deeply recessed windows, on the portières of the high gilded doors, and the curtains of the antique bed--all this was so fitting, so charming, so exactly as it should be in an adventure! Else shook the hand of the matronly Madame von Strummin, thanked her for her kindness, and kissed the pretty little Marie, with the mischievous brown eyes, and asked permission to call her "Meta," or "Mieting," just as her mother did, who had just left the room. Mieting returned the embrace with the greatest fervor and declared that nothing more delightful in the world could have come to her than the invitation for this evening. She, with her Mamma, felt so bored at Strummin!--it was horribly monotonous in the country!--and in the midst of it this letter from the Count! She was fond of coming to Golmberg, anyhow--the forest was so beautiful, and the view from the platform of the tower, from the summit of Golmberg beyond the forest over the sea--that was really charming; to be sure, the opportunity but seldom! Her mother was a little indolent, and the gentlemen thought of their hunting, their horses, and generally only of themselves. Thus she had not been a little surprised, too, at the haste of the Count today in procuring company for the strange young lady, just as if he had already known beforehand how fair