In the warm June weather Erlsbach is at its best. So green, and fragrant, and cool, with soft airs blowing from the pine forests, and the gleam of snow on the mountain heights, and the emerald waters of the river shining in vivid brightness where the sunrays slant amidst the greenness of the boughs. It boasts of but one hotel does Erlsbach, a little old-fashioned hostelry, with nothing to recommend it save that it is very clean and picturesque, and its people are honest as the day. To Erlsbach, and, as a matter of course, to the Kaiser Hof, come one June evening a party of two ladies and two maids, a courier, and luggage _en attendance_. Their arrival is expected, their rooms are taken; the best rooms, with a balcony overlooking the river, and that far-off view of the mountain heights beyond, where the purple light of evening is melting on the whiteness of eternal snows. When the bustle of arrival is over, one of the two ladies comes out on the balcony and stands there for long, looking out at the pretty, peaceful scene. A voice from a room within speaks after a time: "Do you like it, Lauraine?" The figure moves, turns half round. "It is like a poem," she says, softly. "Like it? One can hardly say that; one _feels_ it." The speaker advances and joins her. "Yes; you are right. I only came here once; it was years ago, and my heart was heavy with a great sorrow. I left it behind me, Lauraine; buried it amid the lonely woods and mountain ways. Oh, my dear, my dear, if you might do the same?" A sigh parts the beautiful grave lips of Lauraine Vavasour; she grows very pale. "That cannot be," she says, faintly. "I could never forget easily; and this, this was part of my life--myself. Do not let us speak of it, Etwynde; it hurts me still." "People say to talk of their troubles lightens them." "I am not like that then. My sorrow is shut in my heart. I cannot bear to profane it with speech." "But it makes it so much harder to bear, Lauraine." "Not to me; nothing on earth, even your sympathy, could lighten it." Lady Etwynde is silent. Her thoughts go back to that dreary, awful time when the child's death was yet so new a thing; it is nearly nine months ago now, and Lauraine has been all that time in the gloomy old mansion on the Northumbrian shores. The funeral had been long over before Sir Francis returned, and then he had made but a brief stay, and gone to Scotland with some friends.