"Pray, take a seat. It has to go to the post-office in half an hour. Listen! What do you think of this original metre, which seems to be worthy of our Freiligrath? The title is, 'The lion at the Cape.'" The Castalian Spring once opened was not to be checked. Oswald had to submit to his hard fate and allow himself to be flooded by a genuine deluge of wretched verses. Suddenly the door-bell rang again. The sound seemed to be but a signal for the poetess to read with double and treble rapidity, while she laid her hand upon her hearer's arm, as if to prevent him from escaping. There were only about thirty stanzas yet to be read, when a silk dress was heard rustling in the adjoining room, and suddenly the graceful figure of Emily Cloten was standing in the open door which led to the reception-room. "I do not interrupt, I hope?" asked the young lady, with a half shy and half bold glance at Oswald; "I'd rather go away again." "Oh no, no!" replied Primula, in a melancholy tone, putting down the MS. and rising; "not at all! I was just reading to my young friend Stein a few stanzas of a poem. Why, it is nearly half-past seven, and the papers must be at the post-office by eight! Dear Baroness Cloten, dear Mr. Stein, excuse me for the hundredth part of an instant. Stay here in the sitting-room, and I will be back as soon as I have sent off the parcel!" The excited poetess pushed her guests unceremoniously into the next room, whispering at the same time to Oswald: "What a pity! Only a poet can feel it! The _last_ verses were by far the finest." She dropped the curtain, partly to be undisturbed and partly not to disturb her friends, and Oswald and Emily stood gazing at each other--Oswald speechless from astonishment at this strange and unexpected solution of the mystery, and Emily also silent and embarrassed in spite of her boldness and cleverness, but only for an instant. Immediately afterwards she raised her drooping lashes, smiled at Oswald from the corners of her large, gray eyes, and said hurriedly and in a whisper: "You surely do not think it an accident which has brought us together here?" "I hardly know what to believe," replied Oswald, unconsciously assuming the same hurried and secret tone. "Then Mrs. Jager has not told you yet?" "What?" "I made her believe I had a commission to ask you if you would accept a place in the house of some friends of mine; of course, there is not a word of truth in it. I only came----"