'I had them, and when we could get those flowers nowhere else,' she
replied. 'So it was you! So my friends have been about me.'

During the remainder of the walk I was on one side of the chair, and her
little maid on the other, while my father to rearward conversed with Miss
Sibley. The princess took a pleasure in telling me that this Aennchen of
hers knew me well, and had known me before ever her mistress had seen me.
Aennchen was the eldest of the two children Temple and I had eaten
breakfast with in the forester's hut. I felt myself as if in the forest
again, merely wondering at the growth of the trees, and the narrowness of
my vision in those days.

At parting, the princess said,

'Is my English improved? You smiled at it once. I will ask you when I
meet you next.'

'It is my question,' I whispered to my own ears.

She caught the words.

'Why do you say--" It is my question"?'

I was constrained to remind her of her old forms of English speech.

'You remember that? Adieu,' she said.

My father considerately left me to carry on my promenade alone. I
crossed the ground she had traversed, noting every feature surrounding
it, the curving wheel-track, the thin prickly sand-herbage, the wave-