hills with his gun and his dog to spend a quiet afternoon with Hilda in
their favourite sunny corner at the foot of the dismantled tower. When
poverty is to be concealed, his shadow must not be caught lurking at
the door by chance visitors. Nor was it only out of fear of being
surprised by her relations that the quiet baroness insisted that Hilda
and even Berbel should always be presentable. Her pride was inseparably
united with that rigid self-respect which, in the poor, alone saves
pride from being ridiculous. It was indeed marvellous that she should
succeed as she did in hiding the extremity of her need from the
Greifensteins, but it must be remembered that she had never been rich,
and had learned in early youth many a lesson, many a shift of economy
which now stood her in good stead. The Germans have a right to be proud
of having elevated thrift to a fine art. From the Emperor to the
schoolmaster, from the administration of the greatest military force
the world has ever seen to the housekeeping of the meanest peasant, a
sober appreciation of the value of money is the prime rule by which
everything is regulated. Frau von Sigmundskron had made a plan, had
drawn up a tiny budget in exact proportion with the pension which was
her only means of subsistence, and thanks to her unfailing health had
never departed from it. The expenditure had indeed been so closely
regulated from the first, that she had found it necessary to limit
herself to what would barely support life, in order not to stint her
child's allowance. Being by temperament a very religious woman, she
attributed to Providence that success in rearing Hilda for which she
might well have thanked her own iron determination and untiring
efforts. If ever a woman deserved the help of Heaven in consideration
of having bravely helped herself, the baroness had earned that
assistance. So far as the ordinary observer could judge, however, she
had obtained nothing from the world save a reputation for avarice.
Hilda was too much accustomed to the state of things in which she had