"Oh!" exclaimed Hertha, glowing with gratitude for so much kindness, and what was more, the beautiful woman threw her arms round her and kissed her on the lips. Then something happened which she could not have explained. At the moment the stranger's lips touched hers, she was seized anew with the same uncanny feeling which her stepmother's exclamation had awakened in her a few hours earlier. As if turned to stone, she allowed herself to be kissed, and gasped, for the deadening perfume which this embrace exhaled streamed over her and almost took her breath away. Then she heard grandmamma say, "She is still shy ... she hasn't seen much society yet." Dear, dear grandmamma, and she nearly crushed the old, protecting hand, that so kindly guided her stumbling destiny. Now every one sat down on the terrace, and tea was served. It was long past the vesper hour. Hertha sat in a dream, and eat and drank absently as if she hadn't broken her fast for days. Her attention was first caught again by overhearing bits of the conversation which passed between her stepmother and the Baron Kletzingk. There was nothing remarkable about the conversation itself, for it turned on the pedagogic principles which governed Ulrich's education of the village children. Only the tone in which it was conducted was extraordinary. There was something like suppressed scorn in her stepmother's indifferent words, one moment she seemed as if she would like to cry, the next she would collapse into brooding reflection, and her eyes would be fixed on his face, full of stony pain. He, on his side, talked to her as if she were an invalid who was to be humoured. He did not contradict her, but modified at once anything that seemed to displease her ... and when she threw in a derogatory or incredulous remark with her nervously trembling lips, he pretended that he heartily shared her opinion, saying that her reasons were important enough to make him change his mind. But after such a concession he got hardly more than a shrug of her shoulders for answer. "What can he have done to her that she hates him so," thought Hertha; and then her attention wandered again to Felicitas, at whom she stared admiringly. In the middle of the flagging conversation a firm footstep was heard in the breakfast-room, accompanied by the pattering of the St. Bernard's feet. Whoever was speaking broke off before finishing his or her sentence. Every one sat upright and glanced expectantly at the door. Hertha felt her heart beating quickly. For an instant her eyes met those of the beautiful woman, and it seemed to her that the pale face had grown a shade paler. The door was flung back, and Leo burst on to the terrace. Suddenly he paused and drew back. His hand fidgeted with the ends of his beard, his eyes fastened on Felicitas with a searching, threatening gaze. "He doesn't like her," was Hertha's inward comment.