These relations between teacher and pupil had ripened into a friendship of a peculiar nature after Sophie had left the school and become the presiding officer of her father's house. Miss Bear appreciated Sophie's good judgment, and did not disdain to consult the lady, young as she was, in critical cases; and what is more, she almost always followed the advice which her young friend gave, more in play than in good earnest, but always with perfect simplicity and impartiality. Such a case had occurred a few weeks ago, when the Baroness Grenwitz had expressed a wish to send her daughter Helen back for some time to the institution to finish her studies, especially in the sciences. Now such a step was remarkable enough in itself, as Miss Helen was coming straight from a well-known, superior school, in which she had spent four years; but it became still more embarrassing by the circumstance that the instructions which Miss Bear received from the baroness on one side, and from the baron on the other, differed essentially as to the degree of freedom to be granted the young lady. If Miss Bear obeyed the written instructions of the baroness, Helen was to be kept as a state prisoner, under latch and key; if she followed the requests made orally by the baron, when he brought, himself, his daughter to Grunwald, the young lady was to be left in absolute liberty. As both methods of education were equally incompatible with the system adopted in the school. Miss Bear was in great embarrassment, and turned, in her dilemma, to her young friend, to receive from her advice in this mysterious affair. Fortunately Sophie had heard much from her betrothed about the state of things at Grenwitz, and what he had not explained she readily divined by the talent peculiar to all women of delicate feelings. "They tried to marry Helen to a man unworthy of her," said the young lady, as she met her motherly friend soon after Helen's arrival in the mysterious adytum of her study, in order to confer with her about the Grenwitz affair, "and Helen has very properly refused to consent. In return, they have banished her for a time from her paternal home. You will surely not increase the hardship by being unnecessarily severe against the poor girl? Surely, Miss Mal, that would not be like you. Do what the father says: treat Helen not as a pupil--for that, she is too old; treat her as a young girl who has taken refuge with you from a tyrannical mother who ill-treats her, and from a father who is too weak to protect her. For that is, as far as I can see, the truth of the case."