If you are at Lesse Forest still, which I understand adjoins the hills of Quellenheim--and if your friends the Courlands still care to ask me for a day or two, I shall be very glad to come. I am at Quellenheim, Trois Fontaines. Please destroy the letter I intrusted to you to send to my mother. Everything is all right again. I may even have time to fish with you for a day or two. The messenger from Trois Fontaines who takes this will wait for an answer. Please convey my respect and my very lively sense of obligation to the Courlands. And don't let them ask me if it inconveniences them. I can go to Luxembourg just as well and see you there if you can run over. Did you get my luggage? I am wearing my last clean shirt. But my clothes are the limit. If I am to stop for a day or two at the Courlands please telegraph to Luxembourg for my luggage as soon as you receive this. Yours as usual, GUILD. P. S. Do Uhlans ever annoy the Courlands? I imagine that Lesse is too far from the railway and too unimportant from a military standpoint to figure at all in any operations along the edge of the Grand Duchy. And also any of the Ardennes is unfit as a highway between Rhenish Prussia and France. Am I correct? G. He had sealed and directed this letter, and was gazing meditatively out of the diamond-leaded windows at the splashing fountain in the court, when a slight sound attracted his attention and he turned, then rose and stepped forward. Karen gave him her hand, smiling. In the other hand she held the last of her orchids. "Are you rested?" he asked. "Yes. Are you?" "Perfectly, thank you. Really it is beautiful outside the house." She lifted her lovely eyes and stood gazing out into the sunshine. "There is no word from General von Reiter?" she asked, absently caressing her cheek with the fragrant blossom in her hand. "Not yet," he said. "If none comes, what are you going to do?" "I am free, anyhow, to leave now." "Free?" "Free of my engagement with Baron von Reiter." "Free of your obligations to--_me_?" she asked in a low voice. He turned to her seriously: "My allegiance to you needs no renewal, Karen, because it has never been broken. You have my friendship if you wish for it. It is yours always as long as you care for it." "I do.... Are you going to leave--Quellenheim?" "Yes." "When?" "When a messenger brings me an answer to a letter which I shall send this morning." She stood caressing her lips with his flower and gazing dreamily into the forest. "So you really are going," she said. "I cannot help it." "I thought"--she forced a smile--"that you intended to rob me first." He did not answer. "Had you forgotten?" she asked, still with the forced smile. "No."