For long she had believed herself chosen by Heaven to be his good angel. She was not exactly clear how and when this revelation had come to her. Perhaps it was when Elly told the story at school of his duel, of his detention in a fortress, and afterwards of his flight over sea. This duel had been the first romance she had heard of in real life, at a time when she hardly knew that there was such a thing as romance. Then afterwards grandmamma had taught her to hold her virgin heart in reserve for the far-away son. And now he had come, and although she had not yet seen him face to face, one thing she was sure of, and that was that he did not resemble the picture of him she cherished in her heart Both his laughter yesterday and his severity to-day distressed her in an equal degree. Her pale wandering hero could never have laughed like that, and such an expletive as "swinish lot" would certainly not have come from his lips. A dull sense of disappointment slowly I overcame her, and heightened her fear of him. And while she skirted the dewy plantation, she saw him in the far distance galloping over the fields on her mare. One minute he flashed in view like a brilliant phantom, the next he was hidden behind the sheaves. Schumann, the head bailiff, followed him on his roan at a respectful distance. Horse and rider resembled each other--they both looked discomfited and dejected. Now and then Leo beckoned him to his side, as if demanding an account of something. Then he would leave him contemptuously behind again. Hertha fancied she could see the pig-headed way in which the fellow with the sandy beard let the wrath of the returned master pour down on him. She stood on tiptoe and craned her neck. Fury overwhelmed her, too, when some specially disgraceful piece of neglect came under surveillance. She whistled between her closed teeth, and flourished her fist in the air as if she held a riding-whip. As she did not wish to encounter him at any price, she took a sharp turn to the left towards an enclosed alder-marsh, where some young cattle were grazing. There she could hide till he had gone by. She had her favourites amongst this humble herd too; and they used to come and thrust their muzzles on her shoulder to be caressed. She rubbed their woolly foreheads now, thinking of but one thing all the time. "He is here." Then suddenly she heard him coming. She started, and then crouched down behind a stumpy bush. The mare champed under the stinging pressure of the curb. It walked as if it were stepping on glass. "My poor animal, you are having a bad time of it," thought Hertha. And then she looked at him. The peaked cap pushed back on the nape of his neck, his brow pouring with perspiration, the veins standing out in knots on his temples, his glance stern; thus he rode up to the fence. A tyrant, every inch of him!