"Contrary to your wishes and intentions ... An affair which concerns no one but your family ... I really have not the advantage of knowing how I am to interpret the lady's words. I find it impossible to believe that a lady who is so universally known for her stern sense of justice as the Baroness Grenwitz should wish anything different from the last will of a dying man, when chance or providence brings it about, when, against all human expectations, that last will can after many years be fulfilled; I find it impossible to believe that. But what am I saying? You will laugh at me that I have taken a jest, by which you wished to ridicule my over-great desire to serve you, for a moment in good earnest. Do I not know better than anybody else that I have acted exactly according to your views by preserving all the documents, the sacred relics of departed friends, like a precious treasure, and by doing whatever I could do towards securing the property to the rightful owner? Do I not know that your hesitation, your incredulity, your mistrust even, are only the result of your apprehension to awaken in the heart of a fellow-being brilliant expectations, which may not be realized, for, however improbable, it is not absolutely impossible that we may be mistaken. Do I not know that all the parties concerned are of one and the same opinion, and that your husband, whom you have no doubt promptly informed of all the details, is overjoyous to pay off an old debt which fortunately is not yet extinguished by limitation?" The position of a captured she bear, whom the increasing heat of the bars of her cage forces to rise on her hind legs and to dance as gracefully as she can, while she would like nothing better than to break out of her prison and to tear her adversary to pieces, resembles exactly that of the baroness as she was now sitting opposite to Mr. Timm. The cruel irony with which Mr. Timm appealed to that sense of justice and equity of which she had boasted all her life, and of which she after all had nothing but the outward appearance, seized her like a hot iron. Her cold, selfish heart boiled over with indignation. Rage and fury filled her soul. She would have liked to strangle Timm, who sat smiling before her--to stab him, poison him. And she could do nothing, nothing, but swallow her wrath, and to say with all the calmness she might command: "Mr. Timm, you do not look upon the matter exactly as we do; and it is, of course, quite natural that you, who are standing outside, should also see nothing of it but the outside. Unfortunately I am too tired to-night to explain to you my own views of the affair. I have requested my nephew, Felix, to do it in my place, and I beg you, therefore, to look upon anything he may tell you as if it were coming from myself. I am fully persuaded that you will find no difficulty in choosing between the good will of the family of Grenwitz and the friendship of a nameless adventurer. Good-by, Mr. Timm!"