It was late when we reached our destination, a very fine hotel, full of very fine visitors, in what was supposed to be the best situation in Salzbrun. I saw Dr. Trinkwasser the next morning, and, when he had directed me as to the kind and amount of mineral waters I was to swallow, we fell quickly into the ordinary routine of the place. Emmie insisted on getting up in time to go with me to the spring from which I fetched my early morning draught, and then we took the prescribed constitutional, and watched the gay assemblage passing to and fro while we listened to the lively music of an excellent band. "Indeed, uncle, half the fun of being here is in getting up in the morning and watching the water-drinkers," Emmie assured me. "Did you see the faces that fat old German lady made this morning when she got her second glassful? I do believe she must be related somehow to those horrid gutta-percha dolls the children have; no merely human cheeks seem capable of going, day by day, through such contortions without getting permanently fixed in one of them. Old nurse used to tell us, when we made grimaces, that if the wind were to change that very minute we should never be able to get our natural faces again. She did frighten me so; and now I try to keep one eye on Frau Schimpf's visage and one on the weathercock; then, in case anything happened, I should be able to explain it to the doctors, and bear witness against the false, inconstant winds." If loquacity be a sign of health, there was no longer anything amiss with my niece, for her tongue was seldom still, but rattled away incessantly whatever came into her head, and at this time it was generally nonsense that was uppermost. This Frau Schimpf, over whom she was now making merry, had acquired a certain sacredness in many eyes, not from any merit of her own, but because she was living in the character of _dame de compagnie_ with the most admired inmate of our hotel--an inmate rendered all the more interesting by the slight cloud of mystery that hung about her. No one could discover Madame B.'s nationality; she might be Russian, German, Hungarian, Pole--anything almost, except French or English; and then nobody knew whether or no Monsieur B. was in existence, and "Wife or widow?" was the unanswered inquiry made concerning her by every new arrival at the Schwartz Adler. Madam was tall, dignified, and graceful; her dress, invariably black (which settled the question of her widowhood in my mind), was made in the latest Parisian fashion, her white hands flashed with diamond rings, a faint pink tinged her cheeks, her brows were dark and well defined, her eyes dark and lustrous; but her greatest charm of all lay in her hair, it too was dark, raven-hued, and was arranged in piles and pyramids of curls and loops and bows, with all the ingenuity of the most artistic foreign _coiffeur_; a jetty fringe fell in soft waves across her forehead; and from behind one ear a long full, perfumed