The boy hurries back into the house, but his mother is not to be found in the "garden-room," where she commonly sits; nor in the "red-room" adjoining, to which she retires when she wishes to be alone. The boy hurries from the garden-room--leaving the door, of course, wide open--into the garden, and down the long walk between the clipped yews of the terrace. As he does not find his mother here, and yet is in such a very great hurry, he considers whether he has not done all that could be done. He hesitates for a moment, and is just about to turn back, when it occurs to him that Baumann is sure to ask him, sometime during their ride: Young gentleman, did you say good-by to the baroness? and that he would be ashamed to have to say, No! He jumps with one leap down the steps which lead to the terrace and runs deeper into the garden, calling out from time to time: "Mamma! Mamma!" "Here!" replies suddenly a female voice quite near; and as he turns quickly round a bush, which has been so well sheltered by old linden-trees that it has almost all its leaves yet, he nearly rushes into his mother's arms: "What is the matter, wild one?" says Melitta, placing her hands upon the boy's shoulders. "We are going to ride out," says the boy, who is in such a hurry that he can hardly speak. "But the sky looks very threatening." "Oh, Baumann says--no, Baumann says the same. But I am _so_ anxious to ride! Please, dear mamma, please!" "If it were not so late," said Melitta, looking at her watch, "I should like to go with you." "Oh pray, mamma, do that another time. You would have to change your dress, and then it may really commence snowing, and then we can't go at all." "You may be right," replied Melitta, unconsciously smiling at the boy's naïve egotism. "Then make haste and get away. But put on an overcoat." She kisses the boy on his red lips, and the boy runs away delighted. Five minutes later old Baumann has himself saddled the boy's pony--he never allows the grooms to saddle either the pony or Melitta's horse--and the two gallop out of the main gate into the bare fields. When the boy had left her, Melitta resumed her walk in the avenues between the cunningly-trimmed hedges of beech-trees and the yew-pyramids. They were the same avenues through which she had walked arm in arm with Oswald on a beautiful summer afternoon when the sun was sending down red rays through the green foliage above upon the flower-beds in all their splendor. How the scene had changed since then? Where are the red rays of the sun now? where the green leaves? and where the bright flowers? Is this the same earth that exhaled a soft, balsamic breath, like the kiss of a loved one? the same earth which shone in its wedding garment? which embraced the high sky like a bride in the light of countless stars? And she, herself--she had changed almost as much; but in her, summer has not changed into winter. She has altered, but surely not for the worse.